A Battle of Wills
by insinr8
Summary: Following the destruction of the Temple Ship, humanity rises to become stronger than ever, and is determined that they will never again allow any enemy to repeat what the Ethereals did. In Vigilo Confido.
1. Interim

**I've been kicking this idea around in my head for a while, so I decided that now's the time to get it out.**

 **This story will use X-COM Enemy Within as a backstory, not Terror from the Deep, so no Aquatoids, Sonic Weapons (for now) or T'Leth. Obviously, this story will also not follow the "canonical ending" that leads into X-COM 2.**

 **At the moment, I am not sure if I want to implement Mutons into Shepard's squad. If you have any ideas on that, please tell me in the reviews. No guarantees, but if I draw inspiration, you'll get credits...and a cookie!**

 **Final Note: I do not own X-COM or Mass Effect.**

Prologue

 **2017**

 _The destruction of the 20-kilometer long Temple Ship halted the alien invasion in its tracks. The backlash from the death of its commander overwhelmed the rest of its kind, resulting in the psionic immolation of every last ethereal on the planet. This was later discovered to be a result of the massive psionic communications network employed by the alien forces. Unfortunately for Earth, that meant the loss of control over their subordinate races and the subsequent crash landings of all their craft in the skies._

 _By the time the world militaries scrambled to the crash sites all around the globe, the craft had all been abandoned, leading to a massive effort to track down and contain every last alien. In order to better coordinate recovery and salvage efforts, X-COM was semi-revealed to the world under the guise of the UN establishing a crisis management team. Using disguised laser weapons and retrofitted interceptors, teams of now highly-experienced operatives moved in to capture or eliminate the disorganized alien invaders. To take precautions against the possible continued existence of the rogue organization EXALT, the alien ships were stripped of their Elerium and Meld technology by X-COM before any other individuals were allowed into the area._

 _Several Chrysallid outbreaks occur within the Amazon Rainforest, and tensions rise across the world when X-COM's cover organization orders a massive military bombardment of the rain forest. Environmentalists across the world decry this response, with several extremists persisting in protest in spite of "new discovery" of the effects of a Chrysallid infestation. Nevertheless, the world militaries prepare for the worst and begin training entire cities in quarantine protocols. The US and Canadian military send a rapid response force to monitor South America as well as coordinate relief efforts for the civilian populations. Soon afterward, sections of Africa are also declared infested and cordoned off by European Union Emergency Response Forces._

 _Finally having untouched and fully-functioning alien computer banks, X-COM begins the long and arduous process of decrypting and deciphering the alien archives. They are aided by surprisingly cooperative Sectoid Commanders and their lesser brethren, who in the absence of Ethereal domination revert to mindlessly maintaining technology._

 **2018**

 _X-COM's efforts in extracting information lead to the conception of an anti-Chrysallid virus. Further development and eventual deployment takes six more years, during which several more large areas of the world have been quarantined. To the relief of the world, it is learned that there is a certain level of bio-mass required to sustain a Chrysallid infestation, and that Chrysallids possess a natural aversion to water. Large "water-breaks" are subsequently constructed around each quarantined area. Several Chrysallid specimens are captured by deep strike MEC teams for experimentation and testing._

 _Reports begin coming in of individuals developing strange abilities post-invasion. Completely without X-COM input, the authorities of the world take to apprehending and isolating them from the rest of the population before requesting further direction. Due to this effort and a later cover story, the civilian populace is kept ignorant of the existence of Psionics. X-COM determines that this new mass development results from innate sensitivity coupled with the backlash from the death of the Ethereals. The newly-discovered Psionic individuals are hidden away, and later form the progenitor of the Systems Alliance Military._

 _X-COM discovers a faint Psionic signature at the site of an explosion, later revealed to be the Volunteer, Colonel Marcus Summers. Severely wounded and comatose, he is immediately repatriated by his comrades._

 **2025**

 _With the information gleaned from the alien archives, humanity has made many enormous jumps in medical technology. Meld is selectively doled out by X-COM to carefully vetted and briefed institutions, who use it to develop transplant procedures, cures for auto-immune and neurological diseases and life-extension._

 _Also dredged from the alien archives is a translation suite for the various races. Proper communications open up with the Mutons and Cyberdiscs. While the mutons have little to add to what is known about them, the Cyberdiscs are discovered to be an example of naturally evolved AI, developing from protocells into silicate-based insectoid life, and then augmented by the Ethereals with an organo-metallic carapace and integrated weapons systems. With communication comes a level of understanding. The Cyberdiscs were part of the Ethereal forces out of gratitude, but had not signed up for the campaign of forced uplift or assimilation._

 _The Cyberdiscs also reveal that the Mutons are bioengineered soldiers with little independent thought. The failures are remade into Floaters, the low-quality standard troops are simply cloned templates, and the Muton Elites are simply limited successes at creating an autonomous warrior race. This revelation chills X-COM as they realize how lucky they were not to face an army of much smarter and better conditioned Muton Elites._

 _Communication with the Muton Elites or True Mutons leads to their race understanding how they had been used by their creators, and how they are now free to choose their own path as a species, within reason of course. Tensions lessen around the containment camps once it's clear that the two races are not innately hostile._

 _The Thin Men are coaxed into working with X-COM's research teams and providing new information, having little alternative and lacking direction from a Psionic Overseer._

 **2029**

 _X-COM manages to recreate the Drive technology used by the Ethereal forces with the aid of the Sectoids, Cyberdiscs and Thin Men. A large "lifter' platform is created with these drives to bring large amounts of material and equipment into orbit around Earth, and eventually deposited at Lagrange Point 2. Plans are made to transform this mass into Earth's first spaceyard. It eventually becomes the Lagrange Construction Center._

 _In the interest of heading off international tensions and jealousy, X-COM is fully revealed as the organization responsible for beating back the Ethereal Invasion. This is coupled with a clarion call for international unity, and results in the ratification of the Earth Alliance, subsequently to be renamed into the Systems Alliance during the Humanity's age of interstellar colonization. The unification results in the Council being elevated to a planetary government position, and in X-COM becoming a space-faring military force. The LCC begins construction of the first Human warship Enterprise, named by popular vote and planned out as a carrier._

 _Colonel Marcus Summers reawakens to the sight of an older trio of Central Officer Bradford and Doctors Shen and Vahlen. With X-COM's public reveal, Colonel Summers is hauled out and celebrated as the hero that Humanity needed. Marcus Summers is subsequently promoted to General, and placed in command of X-COM's military forces "whenever you decide to come back." It's an offer taken after receiving MEC augmentation to replace his lost right arm and left eye._

 _Quarantined Areas begin full-scale deployment of the anti-Chrysallid virus after finishing preliminary testing and small-scale deployment._

 _Mass-Production of laser weaponry for the Alliance military begins. Plasma and the Fusion lance weaponry are kept hidden away to serve as the "ace in the hole" for X-COM's special unit. SHIV weapons and upgrades are redesigned to be applied to Main Battle Tanks. X-COM's carapace armor becomes standard issue, and undergoes continuous refinement in the future decades. The Vahlenite Armor used in the Titan system is restricted for X-COM's elite forces._

 **2040**

 _Alliance Surveyors discover a crashed yet astonishingly intact Temple Ship computer archive on the Moon. The great mystery prior to opening it is figuring out how it survived. Among other things, the most important discoveries the Alliance finds is a method of mass producing Elerium, the complete plans for the Temple Ship's Wormhole drive as well as astronavigational data. A retiring Officer Bradford calls it "the biggest and luckiest gift horse humanity has ever seen."_

 _X-COM establishes the Jovian Training and Production Center, with a much larger set of shipyards and a Zero-G infantry combat training center for its elite forces. The center also functions as a testing facility for prototype technology. The Alliance First Fleet, while still unfinished, sees simulated action in war game scenarios and also provides lifting capacity for the construction efforts. As a result of the wargames, priority is placed on constructing heavy fighters with long-ranged weaponry and increased power generation over building large non-carrier capital ships._

 _Civilian colonization of the Moon, or Luna, begins. Surveyor teams are also sent to Mars to plan out future development plans._

 **2054**

 _The Alliance has completed retrofitting of the First Fleet with Wormhole drives, and sends out the freshly constructed Second Fleet to the Alpha Centauri system, thus beginning humanity's age of interstellar colonization._

 _The Muton race and a newly born hive of Cyberdiscs depart with the Second Fleet and a bioengineering team, hoping to find a home for the True Mutons and remove the defects in the majority. Pre-departure testing with Meld has shown promising results._

 _Life extension medical science has become mainstream, if somewhat limited in the expected scale. Doctor Shen opts to retire and die peacefully as a natural unaltered human being. Doctor Vahlen and General Summers choose to stay on as X-COM personnel._

 _X-COM discovers the existence of a theoretical Thermal Superconductor, a highly durable substance that even the Ethereals couldn't produce._

 **2072**

 _In gratitude for Humanity's aid, the perfected Muton race applies to become part of the System Alliance. After two months of public debate, the Alliance accepts. It is noted by various think tanks that this decision is less due to altruism than pragmatism: humanity requires all the strength it can muster in order to deal with a potential second incursion by the Ethereals, or any other hostile races. For similar reasons, the Cyberdiscs, or Cydonians (the original hive primarily resides in the Cydonia Research Station on Mars) have been accepted. Regardless of the motives, this agreement marks the reconciliation of humans with the thralls of the Ethereals._

Earth has been mostly rebuilt, and the human population has surpassed the pre-invasion numbers. In a bid to relieve pressure on the still-recovering ecosystem of the planet, the Alliance makes plans for colonizing the nearest habitable systems. Questions arise as to the security of the colony worlds, with X-COM declaring that the colonies will be guarded by individual planetary militias armed with laser cannons. Each colony would also have a Hyperwave relay to call for help when the militia is insufficient. Plasma weapons, fusion lances, and true military armament would remain restricted. A public outcry erupts over this proposal, though it is stifled once world leaders remind the population of how X-COM turned enemy technology against the invaders.

 _The Superconductor production plant and shipyard is completed and placed deep within the Oort Cloud, near the protoplanet Sedna. The facility is guarded by the Third Fleet, and heavily automated to prevent information leaks. Security around this station is the highest in the Alliance. Plans are formulated for a mobile command station for X-COM to be constructed at the station._

 **2100**

 _The Fifth Fleet of the Alliance begins construction. The total number of large ships produced by Alliance shipyards crosses the thousand mark._

 _The Alliance celebrates the beginning of the 22nd century, with the induction of the 22nd colony world, Elysium._

 _X-COM has produced enough of the Thermal Superconducting material to begin constructing the mobile command station, codenamed Olympus. Timing of the project is intended to coincide with the last bit of the superconductor needed to finish the massive ship. Production is estimated to take 20 solar years._

 _The first Cydonian capital ship leaves its cradle from the Cydonian colony Litrella for Elysium. Likewise, the first ships wholly created by the Muton race arrive at Elysium in a symbolic gesture of celebration._

 **2130**

 _Geological surveyors discover a cache of ancient alien artifacts on Mars. Subsequent archaeological investigation shows that the civilization that created them was a wholly different race from the Ethereals, and that it relied on a substance similar to Elerium. Information written into the artifacts points to what is translated as the "Mass Effect," and devices called "Mass Relays" for intragalactic travel. The First, Fourth and Sixth fleets are placed on high alert once it is learned that the closest mass relay used by the lost civilization is locked inside the Charon body._

 _The completion of Olympus is pushed back ten years to accommodate a change of plans and the introduction of anti-matter based weaponry. General Summers expresses great interest in seeing how the new weapons system would match up compared to the originally planned hypervelocity fusion lance._

 **2135**

 _After years of tentative study, the Alliance decides to activate the Charon "Mass Relay." Doctor Vahlen, General Summers, and a newly appointed X-COM Director Jack Harper observe as the ice shatters and vaporizes while the artifact powers up. Astrophysicists record this as the first time that Dark Energy and its effect were directly observed. The Sixth Fleet accompanies a large expedition to see where the artifact will send them, and all are astonished to discover that they arrived almost instantaneously 36 light years away. Scientists note however that while impressive, sufficiently powerful Wormhole drives or gates (theorized, but never seriously developed) could do the same. This event jumpstarts the development of permanent Wormhole Gate installations, as X-COM is loath to risk using another alien race's transportation network._

 _Director Jack Harper is given clearance by General Summers to create a new organization within X-COM. This organization would "do whatever is necessary to ensure our survival, no matter how distasteful." In a moment of whimsy, the director and his chosen second, Eva Core, name their new division Cerberus._

 _Cerberus's first project is the implementation of Element Zero technology. While Elerium is superior to Element Zero for weapons technology, the latter can greatly reduce the power draw for ship movement and unlike Elerium's Gravity Wave effect can attract matter together._

 _Using his new authority, Director Harper commissions the construction of a stealthy mobile research center using deniable funding, with which to conduct operations isolated from X-COM and the Alliance proper. The ship is designated Tartarus._

 **2140**

 _The first two Wormhole Gates are finished, and subsequently used to move the Charon Relay out of solar orbit. The deactivated artifact now sits nearly two thousand light years away in an area of dark space off the galactic plane, along with the second gate, remotely assembled and in a low power mode. More gates are ordered to be deployed to central colony stations with heavy military presence. These will form rapid deployment nodes for the Alliance Navy._

 _An exasperated Doctor Vahlen delays finalized construction on Olympus once again to implement Wormhole Gate technology into the massive super-dreadnought._

 _Director Harper proposes that while X-COM proper remains an elite rapid response force, there should be another more specialized force dedicated to dealing with potential rogues and terrorist organizations such as the dormant/defeated EXALT. Specific concerns are expressed at the possibility of rogue Psionic agents turning against the Alliance, as well as containing knowledge of humanity's potential from other possible enemies. General Summers approves the Extreme Conditions Unit, or X-CON. In later years, high ranking personnel will jokingly imply that the name has to do with the number of "pardoned" criminals serving time as lab rats in the unit._

 _Cerberus finishes development of the Combination Shield technology, which proves successful in blocking both kinetic impacts such as autocannon and missile fire as well as lasers and plasma. Fusion lances still can punch through, albeit with dramatically reduced effectiveness._

 **2147**

 _X-COM develops a rapid-deployment variant of the Wormhole Gate for use by the Alliance Military._

 _The Olympus finally leaves Sedna Station, and promptly gates itself to the Alpha Centauri system to conduct shakedown testing. Afterwards, X-COM begins moving its headquarters and research facilities onboard the massive warship._

 **2156**

 _Tartarus finishes construction._

 _In December, the First and Fourth Fleets return to Sol while the Second, Fifth and Sixth Fleets gather at Elysium in preparation for the Alliance celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Ethereal Defeat._

 **So, that right there is one reason why the Alliance will take some time to reinforce Shanxi.**

 **As a result of drawing its roots from X-COM, the Alliance is quite paranoid and militaristic, a far cry from the original Mass Effect portrayal.**


	2. The First Shots

**Here's the opening shots of the Second Contact War. No plasma weapons. This is the Shanxi Militia, not the actual Alliance Navy defending. Warning: major physics and number crunching at the end.**

Chapter One

 **Shanxi**

"I wonder where this one goes," Agent Ben Hislop commented from the bridge of the research cruiser, the _Oculus_.

"We'll find out soon enough," Dr Eva Core replied as she tapped away at her station. "Final checks on the drones are almost finished. Then we send them out, turn that oversized tuning fork on, and away we go."

- _We would appreciate it if you did not refer to our children so flippantly_ \- A nearby Cydonian technician hummed into her implant.

"In fairness to her, she doesn't mean anything by it." Hislop countered. " 'Immature Cydonian' is a bit of a mouthful. Besides, they're not sentient yet, right?"

"Ben," Core said warningly, "shut up. You're just making it worse."

Hislop rolled his eyes and then refocused on the projected image of the Mass Relay with a bored look. Once upon a time, a 15-kilometer piece of metal with a highly energized core would have been quite impressive, but not after his time aboard the Olympus. _Hell, especially not after I got to see that thing test fire the main gun._ "Hey Doc, you ever wonder what would happen if big blue and sparky in the middle went critical?"

"If it went _critical,_ the computers on board would use that energy to envelop the nearest spacecraft in a Mass Effect envelop, giving it negative mass, and firing it off at superluminal speeds. In other words, if 'blue and sparky' goes critical, it's doing its' job." Core looked over in annoyance. "Now if the core went _supercritical,_ emissions would overwhelm the core shielding and magnetic flux armatures, and it would blast a stream of either Dark Energy or highly ionized Element Zero through whichever section of the shielding is weakest. That would either boil whatever is unfortunate enough to be in the way, or the sudden chaotic effects of gravity from the leaking Dark Energy could do anything from explode it from the inside to converting people like us into a meat mash and pancaking the ship."

"That last part is unlikely to occur, Doctor," a new voice joined in as a holographic representation of an eyeball appeared in the corner of the bridge display. "The Dark Energy gravitational anomaly would destabilize the Elerium reactor cores well before hull structural failure, bringing the generated antimatter in contact with the highly energized E 115. Given the less-than-reinforced nature of the ship, the sudden release of heat and gamma photons would flood the ship, vaporizing the crew and slagging the interior bulkheads."

- _We believe this conclusion to be reached in error. From our analysis of the machinery, the hive concludes that the containment field is far too stable for any such field weaknesses to exist. As the Mass Relay draws energy from the core to power the containment field, there would be a positive feedback loop in the field strength, refocusing the energy and prompting the core to release even more until material failure of the flux armatures. At such a point, the field will fail all at once and the energy yield would be an order of magnitude higher than the output of the nearest stellar body-_

"Fine, whatever," Core replied, taking satisfaction in seeing her fellow Cerberus operative turn somewhat green. "Point is that if 'blue and sparky' goes nuts, we die no matter what. So stop asking stupid questions. We haven't even turned it on yet."

"Right," Hislop muttered, "sorry I asked."

Meanwhile, on a nearby militia cruiser, the _Stanchion_ , Rear Admiral Hans Koenig tapped his foot impatiently as he stood next to the militia commander. "I hate this job," he muttered. "Nothing to do but stand around watching the eggheads and techies move an enemy weapon around that could activate at any moment, and there's no weapons to power up."

Captain Zachary Halter appeared mildly less irritated. "Well, it could be worse. Not quite sure how."

Koenig looked over and cracked a smirk. "It would be worse if you were also an Alliance military liason. Then someone else would be doing your job, and you'd be just as useless as I am right now. Hell, since you're not a flag like me, you'd probably be driving a desk doing paperwork and writing reports back to Headquarters."

Halter raised an eyebrow. "I thought it was the other way around, sir."

"One of the secret perks to being a brasshole is that most people won't dare tell you not to palm off your paperwork. And the ones who would: a) they outrank you, and b) they're the ones doing it to you."

"I see…"

"Don't give me that look. Bet you a case of Adams that Old Man Williams has been doing it to you this whole time."

 _No bet,_ the captain thought to himself, knowing better than to start something between flags. "Looks like they're finally ready, sir. The Relay is powering up."

"About damn time," the admiral grumbled as he turned back to the display.

The _Oculus_ released a cloud of strangely shaped Cydonians that immediately clumped together and sealed to each other. Timing their internal drives carefully, the mass moved towards the now-empowered Relay, and then when a stream of energy touched them, the drones disappeared.

"Transition complete, Doctor," Oculus reported. "core unit reports full functionality via QEC."

-We concur-

"Good. Let's get a stellar map and figure out where in the galaxy they are right now."

 **The Kyrinnus**

General Desolas Arterius stomped out of his office and made his way to the bridge of his flagship, already in a foul mood after receiving word that a new research vessel was heading his way an required a proper Turian escort. _Spirits damned scientists. Would it kill them to hire someone else to handle their security for them? But no, they just HAVE to call on the nearest patrol unit for "protection" out in this forsaken sector._ "What?" he growled at his XO.

"General, the _Jaskus_ reports unusual activity near the 314 Relay. They're requesting permission to investigate."

"Permission to _investigate?_ The captain didn't think to try and identify _before_ calling in?!"

"Sir, Captain Orinia is new to her post," the XO held up his hands placatingly. "You know how it is, sir."

Knowing that it certainly wouldn't be fair to take his frustration out on the man before him, Desolas took a deep breath before making it official. "Permission is _granted_. And I seem to recall that the 314 relay was inactive. If someone turned it on, then they're in violation of Citadel law. Make sure she knows that."

"Yes sir."

 **The Jaskus**

"Alright people," Orinia clapped her hands. "we have our orders. If that Relay is live, someone is going to pay for it. Let's move!"

"Yes ma'am!"

The young commanding officer watched the sensor display as the ship closed in. She idly wondered who would be the ones responsible. Batarians? Nasty slavers and pirates the whole lot of them, with a long history of flouting Citadel law. Quarians? Not likely, since the Migrant fleet was supposed to be on the other damned side of the galaxy.

"Contact! Contacts around the Relay."

"ID?"

"Nothing ma'am, no match to anything in the databanks."

Orinia furrowed one eye. Pirates were notorious for modding their craft, so a signature with no match didn't really say all that much. Probably not Quarian though, since those suit rats tended not to go exploring deep space on their own. "Size?"

"Multiple small units ma'am. Getting harder to keep contact with them. They were probably densely packed together before."

 **The Oculus**

"The drones are sensing something unusual, Doctor. Some of the images they're sending back do not match any of the star charts."

Dr. Core frowned. "Have them try again."

"Match failure, Doctor. Shall I pull up the images in question?"

"If you please."

Hislop looked with curiosity. "What's up, Doc?"

"Oculus, are there any differences between the first set and the second set?"

"There are four. One appears to have a greater variance than the other three."

"Have all drones focus on that object."

Soon, a new image pulled up. "Magnify please."

Hislop's blood ran cold as the picture zoomed in. "Uh Doc, might want to recall the drones."

-Alien craft does not match Ethereal profiles. Intent is unknown-

"That thing is closing in on the Relay. Probably spotted the drones when they arrived, and they're coming to investigate. Don't know about you, but when I see something with a gun running at me, I'd prefer to make contact with them when I'm good and ready."

Core bit her lip, and then made a decision. "Oculus, recall them and notify the Admiral."

 **The Jaskus**

"Unknowns are regrouping ma'am! They're heading for the Relay!"

 _They're running away,_ Orinia thought. "Call the group and notify the _Kyrinnus_! We're going after them!"

 **The Stanchion**

"Say again, Doctor?"

"You heard me, Admiral. Incoming X-Rays. We don't know their intentions, so for the love of god, don't let this get out of hand!"

"Understood. You better clear the area ma'am."

"Right."

Admiral Koenig turned to Captain Halter. "Know your First Contact procedures, son?"

"I-it's been a while, sir…"

"Remember, it's fingers off the triggers unless they shoot first."

"Yes sir."

"Well, go on. This is your boat. I'm just here for the ride."

Captain Halter took a deep breath, and then began issuing orders. "Alpha Group, front and center. We have guests coming in. Bravo Group, off to the side. Charlie Group, prepare a Wormhole behind the Relay. If this goes south, you're our Ace in the hole. All units prime weapons and place shields on standby. Acknowledge!"

"Alpha copy."

"Bravo copy."

"Charley copy."

Halter wiped his suddenly sweaty hands on his service trousers before looking to the admiral.

"No fighters, son?"

"No sir. Our carriers took a load of civilians over to Elysium for the Anniversary Celebration."

The admiral's face darkened before he turned back toward the tactical display. For a good five minutes nothing happened except that the _Oculus_ hightailed it away from the relay before rippling and vanishing as its Wormhole drive did its thing. Finally, several contacts winked into existence.

"X-Rays spotted!"

"Prepare firing solutions as convenient! Do NOT execute. Repeat, do NOT open fire!"

 **The Jaskus**

"Spirits, they're waiting for us!" Orinia nearly slapped herself for that. Of COURSE they would be.

"Unfamiliar ship signatures."

"Anything on their weapons?"

"We're detecting very strong EMS. Every ship here seems primed to fire."

"Captain, we're receiving a transmission from General Arterius!"

"Open it."

The screen rippled to life to show a very irritated general. "I see them, Captain."

"Sir, I-"

"You are directed to make an example of these primitives for breaking the law. This area needs to be cleared anyway."

"Sir! They're-"

"That's an order," the general bit out. "The _Gorin_ and her group are waiting for your coordinates to come in and hit them from behind. Make it happen." And with that, the screen flickered out.

"Signal cut off, ma'am," the comm officer reported.

Orinia gripped the command station. What in the Spirits was the general thinking?! But as a wet-behind-the-flanges captain…

"Send our coordinates to the _Gorin_. Don't power up the mass drivers until after they arrive."

"But captain!"

"We have our orders," She replied stoically.

 **The Stanchion**

"No response to our hails, sir."

Captain Halter nervously turned toward the admiral.

"I don't like this. If they're not answering us, they could be setting up for something. And if that's the case, they didn't come in peace."

"What should we do?"

"Well-"

"New contacts sir! Behind us!"

The tactical display flashed as nine new ships appeared behind them, having first winked into existence near the Mass Relay, and then microjumping behind them.

"X-RAYS ARE POWERING UP WEAPONS!"

"Full power to shields! Prepare to fire!"

As the lights went to safety red, the admiral's face turned stony. "If they won't come in peace, then we'll make them leave in pieces."

 **The Jaskus**

Orinia watched stoically as the first volley of Accelerator fire slammed into the unknown ships, activating an odd yellowish kinetic barrier.

"The second group is preparing to fire ma'am!"

"No response?"

"Not yet ma'am! Those kinetic barriers they have are holding stea-"

And then the enemy fired. Searing hot beams of deep purple erupted from their spinal guns. The fire from the largest vessel, a sleek white craft, touched the other cruiser under her command, and exploded the right nacelle joint. The instantaneous journey, the hundred terajoules of energy, non-response from the ship's kinetic barriers, and the low thermal conductivity of the ship armor meant that more than 23 kilotons worth of pure energy was introduced into an area of the ship only two meters in diameter. The resulting heat transfer was nearly thirty times what the manufacturer specified the material could handle. Even if it had been only three times more, it would have made little difference. The material exploded into a cloud of plasma many times hotter than a stellar surface, and was forced deep into the delicate machinery beneath the hull, slagging the control and fuel lines of the cruiser while blasting the right side engines clear off and sending it spiraling into the void. Even with the entire back of the ship to absorb the heat from the cloud, the plasma still melted through the drive core shielding, causing a fatal breech.

The drive core of Element Zero, driven up to critical in order to power the Mass Accelerator, exploded when the magnetic containment failed, ripping the back of the cruiser to pieces, and explosively decompressing, flinging the lone surviving engine crewmember into space. With the loss of power, the cruiser died completely, the commander on board having no time to order his crew to don their masks before they all suffocated as environmental control systems failed.

Two more of those purple energy beams killed off another frigate, while the other two punctured a destroyer, exploding the bridge room and cutting the control lines along the spine.

One volley from five alien vessels, and three of her ships died.

"Energy weapons," she whispered in horror. These aliens had energy weapons! "All ships! Target that enemy cruiser! Take it out before it fires again!"

Having witness how effective its guns were, the _Gorin_ and its brothers turned to fire on it when more enemy craft appeared behind THEM and fired at point blank range.

 _Spirits! They have more?_ "General Arterius! The aliens have energy weapons! One shot killed the _Eskin_ , and they are bringing up reinforcements! We need backup!"

One enemy craft crumpled up before her eyes as eight Mass Accelerator rounds smashed into it on all sides before exploding. Good to know those things can die, she thought.

"How many enemies?"

"At least eight of them! It took almost a full volley to kill ONE of these things, sir!"

 **The Kyrinnus**

"Very well, send the coordinates." Desolas turned away from the screen to his XO. "We're taking everyone. If this new race has the technology to use energy weapons, we NEED to put them under the Hierarchy."

"Yes sir!"

 **The Stanchion**

"Eight X-Rays destroyed, sir!"

"Maneuver our forces to the outside of the group! Bravo can't fire until we're clear!"

"Engines to full! Let's move!"

The _Stanchion_ and it's single surviving group member cleared out, allowing Bravo to fire a four-part volley into the _Gorin_ and her sisters. But the captain nervously eyed the flickering shield banks.

"I don't know if we can make this, sir!"

"Remember your training, captain. You need to keep a cool head. We're the Systems Alliance. We beat back the Ethereals with their entire army. We can-"

"NEW CONTACTS SIR!"

The admiral looked back to the display and his face paled. "Bloody fucking…"

Nearly thirty new enemy ships, including one twice the size of the second largest ship, emerged from the Mass Relay.

 **The Kyrinnus**

Desolas's trained eye took in the battlefield. The _Jaskus_ was desperately trying to reposition out of the line of fire while the _Gorin_ and her sisters were flanked by two groups, and only five of them were left. Out of fifteen ships, seven frigates, four destroyers and four cruisers, only two of the latter and five of the former remained, for a trade-off of four-FOUR of these alien craft.

"Firing solutions locked, sir!"

"Execute these lawbreakers."

 **The Stanchion**

The admiral clenched his teeth, and then slowly but deliberately keyed a command line while the captain shouted panicked orders to Bravo and Charlie to re-align their guns.

"Shanxi Garrison."

"This is Rear Admiral Hans Koenig," the admiral said in a subdued voice. "Get me General Williams, quick as you can."

In the short five seconds before the General picked up, the admiral looked out through the bridge windows just in time to see the massive alien flagship's cannon start to glow.

"Hans?"

"James, I'm sorry to tell you this, old boy, but you're about to have company."

 **Now I know that inevitably, some people are going to say that's not what laser weapons do. Yes it is, in fact, what laser weapons do.**

 **First, what is a laser? A focused beam of photons, all the same wavelength and frequency, along an exceedingly narrow pathway.**

 **Second, that is a 100 terajoule laser from a cruiser, the Alliances THIRD largest ship type, (in practical terms, the second, since the Olympus is intended to be one-of-a-kind)** **. That is 2.4 times 10^13th Calories, or enough energy to heat an Olympic swimming pool** **'s worth of water (3125 cubic meters) to 7680 degrees Celsius. For comparison, the substance with the highest melting point melts at 4215 degrees Celsius**.

 **Third, that explosion is due to the time of exposure. That massive blast of energy transfer from a laser directly into a hard substance over a small area occurs over less than a quarter second. So suddenly, ship armor that almost certainly has a specific heat capacity LESS than water is receiving 23 kilotons of energy over an area of roughly 3.14 square meters on the surface instead of a volume of 3125 cubic meters. That will at LEAST clear 50,000 Celsius of surface temperature, and you have an instant contrast of a layer possibly one million atoms thick to to an area that is closer to maybe 100 degrees Celsius. I don't care what you hit with that kind of energy. It will flash into plasma, layer by layer, over nanoseconds.**

 **This is in stark contrast to the usual portrayal of a laser "drilling" through its target, but it is exactly what laser weapons would do. They burn instead of piercing. It's also why when your soldiers hit walls instead of a dodging Sectoid or Thin Man that the walls are destroyed in-game.**

 **Fourth, the resulting plasma "drifting" into the Eezo core compartment is mainly from the final part of the armor, where some of the energy actually translates into kinetic energy rather than thermal energy. When the armor is thin enough due to trillions of layers of atoms being blasted off, the force of the photons slamming into the surface will not 100% translate to heat. It will begin to warp and push in on the armor, with the effect increasing as it gets thinner and more vaporized. When it finally gives, the floating chunk of armor also becomes plasma and flies inward.**

 **And now "if all that's true, how would that cruiser fire that thing without slagging the gun?" It uses magnetic lensing instead of a physical lens. Remember this is a giant laser cannon on a ship. The focusing cavity (aka the "barrel") can be as long as the ship itself. The cannon as all the space it needs to cram in the hardware for the stupidly powerful magnetic field needed to contain this energy as it builds up in the chamber.**

 **As for the violet color instead of red like the game, these guns are designed to operate without atmosphere. They don't need to lower the frequency down to red or infrared to more efficiently punch through a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen. They can go straight up to the ultraviolet spectrum, like the Geth laser weapons do.**


	3. And the Last

**People who have read XCOM Second Contact may recognize Councilor Jaroll. Jaroll is property of Agayek. I used him as homage and because I think a troll salarian councilor is funny.**

Chapter Two

 **Shanxi, Ground**

The lieutenant cradled the custom rifle gifted to him by Cerberus, watching his prey closely as the squad of eight X-Rays approached the suburb limits. Down below were three Shanxi Militia, former marines at that, itching to put some lasers through enemy flesh. But they would wait until he took the shot. Finally, he saw what he was looking for, the cue of the squad officer. Perfect. That one would die first, and then the commo boy.

He double clicked his radio, then did it again. Then he waited until he heard three clicks in return. He smiled. Two shots, then open fire.

Even though he knew it to be a waste of effort with the lack of recoil, his training kicked in and he held his breath tight as he sighted the prototype rifle on the officer, waiting for the blasted X-Ray to…there!

The rifle was a newly developed SASER weapon. Instead of stimulated light emission, it used stimulated sound. What it traded off in range, it made up for as a stealth weapon. A focused beam of high frequency sound emitted from the chamber and directly into the skull of the enemy officer. At range 800, there would have been a good chance at a concussion. Here at range 500, the X-Ray's brain matter was surely pulped and scrambled, judging by how the things' head flew backward at literal breakneck speed.

A quick adjustment and the second target with the signal amplifier pack on his back dropped dead. The former ("retired," they insisted) marines down below opened up and finished off the bewildered and decapitated squad.

 _"Nicely done, Predator."_

The lieutenant chuckled before keying his mic. "More where that came from, sir."

 _"Good, we're gonna need it."_

Lieutenant David Anderson sighed as he shouldered his concussion rifle and prepared to climb down from his perch. "All in a days work."

 **Shanxi, Militia Command**

General James Williams was not having the best of weeks. He consoled himself with the fact that at least most of the colony civilians were off-world. That meant the hold-out bunkers had plenty of supplies he could dip into to keep his forces going. But it left him short on numbers. Nearly everyone who had chosen to stay behind had already taken up arms against the invaders. The science vessel _Oculus_ had left to get help after depositing its X-COM contingent at his command, and they were expected to reach Hyperwave range in a week, and reinforcements would likely take another week and a half to arrive.

 _Unless,_ he allowed himself a moment of fancy, _unless General Summers himself decides to bring the Olympus here._ The only ship in the Alliance that could travel anywhere within the hour would also be one hell of a reinforcement with its personal fleet and plasma weapons. The chances of the X-COM commander bringing that here though were…not very realistic, to say the least.

 _Focus,_ he told himself. _Make do with what you have._ It was evident from the captured weapons off the dead that the alien invaders didn't have anywhere near the technology that his militia did. He suspected that X-COM would have a field day with the enemy hardware, but that wasn't what was giving his people trouble. It was the fact that there were at least twenty-two enemy ships directly above the planet, ready to rain death down on the colony at the first sign of concentrated resistance. It was a small comfort that they had chosen not to bombard the city, but General Williams was of the opinion that sooner or later, the enemy would do so. Had he been in charge of the enemy attack, that would have been the first thing ordered, followed by dropping troops and outsider crystals around the perimeter, trapping the enemy within a wrecked and hopefully non-functioning city.

Now as for assets, the squad of X-COM Predators were the absolute best he had, and what assets they were. With their guidance, his militia forces breezed through refresher training and were matching the X-Rays shot for shot like seasoned veterans. He also had a few retrofitted Mechtoids who had previously been serving as cargo loaders and handlers. Now carrying large autocannons, they were his fallback plan should anything go south. One of the Predators had hacked the vehicle repair drones of every repair station he could find and repurposed them to serve as recon drones. It hadn't taken long for the enemy to realize what they were, but the drones were too small for them to hit at 200 meters up. Well, except for their snipers.

The general rubbed his face as he considered the positions of his forces. He was playing a dangerous game. Where other commanders might have pulled back, he had ordered his men to close up to the enemy lines, explaining to them that if the enemy wised up, they'd just find where the Militia was centered around, form a perimeter, and blast it to dust from orbit. This way, close as they were to the enemy, the commander might be reticent to order a bombardment so close to his own troops. But the problem was finding the delicate balance. He still needed a secure pathway between his forces and the supply bunkers.

"Problem sir?"

He looked up to see the young lieutenant in command of the Predator squad enter the post. "You might say that," he replied, gesturing at the digital map. "We need to hold position close enough to our supplies but far enough away and wide enough that the enemy doesn't try to encircle us."

"My team could do some deep strikes, plant some confusion, buy your boys time to solidify your positions sir."

"Dangerous operation, Lieutenant."

"We're Predators, sir. No matter what, everything is our prey."

Williams chuckled at the gung ho display. "I hope it stays that way."

"I can get my men together and we'll make some noise tomorrow."

"When in doubt, pull them out. I really can't afford to lose you guys."

"I'll keep that in mind, sir."

 **Citadel, Presidium**

Councilor Jaroll didn't even look up from his tea as Councilors Sparatus and Tevos entered the café.

"I hope you don't mind this interruption of your day," he drawled while an irritated Sparatus glanced at his omnitool.

"And I hope you'll just skip right to what you want us to be aware of," Tevos replied in a long-suffering voice.

"Perhaps after Councilor Sparatus has his chance to offer the Hierarchy's side of the story," the unusually slow-talking salarian said, looking over to the turian in question.

"The Hierarchy's side of what story?" the councilor asked testily.

"How about the rather disastrous 'First Contact' your hot-headed General Arterius has made with a race that mastered energy weapons?"

"What is this?!" Tevos rose from her chair, rage in her voice. "Sparatus, what in the goddess's name did your soldiers do to foul up a First Contact?!" Sparatus cursed that salarian with every epithet he could think of before he turned to address the asari councilor.

"General Arterius was running a Relay patrol, and he reported some unknowns tampering with the inactive 314 Relay. He acted as he thought was necessary to enforce Citadel law," Sparatus replied defensively.

"Oh on the contrary," Jaroll cut in smoothly as he sipped at his cup. "I do seem to recall that the communications logs between the good general and a young captain…Orinia, was it? –showed that he recognized that the unknowns she encountered were a new race and according to his own personal reports, later edited out for official purposes of course, he decided that they would become the next client race of the Hierarchy. By force."

"That is an outrageous accusation of military impropriety!"

Jaroll ignored the outburst and turned toward Tevos. "You will note, of course, that our dear Councilor Sparatus did not _deny_ this 'outrageous accusation of military impropriety'."

Tevos once again checked her omnitool to remind herself of when Jaroll would retire and rid her of the trouble he caused.

 **Shanxi, Turian Command**

The moment Desolas walked into the room, Orinia stomped her foot. "Room, attention!"

"As you were," he replied. "Anything to report on enemy contacts?"

"The blasted primitives are using some kind of drones to keep an eye on our forward elements," Captain Vyrnnus growled. "I've already lost three recon squads to them."

"Considering that this race is using DEWs as infantry weapons and seeing how tough their fleet was, I wonder how you can still think they're 'primitive,'" Major Adrien Victus commented.

"These hairless pyjacks don't have the nerve to stand and fight-"

"Funny, I think it's more that they don't have the stupidity to needlessly expose themselves to our orbital guns. They're in a bad position, and they know it. They're going to try and stay mobile to avoid contact. The second we get a lock on their position, we'd open up on them."

"The enemy is based around their city," Desolas reminded his staff. "That's their centerpoint. That's where they'd keep their supplies."

"And that's what we should be aiming at, sir?" Orinia asked.

"Not a bad idea," Victus commented. "As mobile as the enemy is, they're still tied to the city. Blow it out from under them and they'll have to move somewhere else."

"That should be a last resort. The Council frowns on Orbital bombardment of a habitable planet."

 **Shanxi, Forward Staging Area 3**

Anderson knelt in the undergrowth, a nervous Militia sniper beside him. "You got all that?"

"Y-yes sir!"

"Okay, just keep that rifle steady, and pull out when you need to. That rifle is top secret stuff, so I better get that back in one piece."

Leaving the sniper in his perch, he moved forward, armor on standby, until he closed to thirty meters of the clearing the X-Rays had established. "Papa lead, X-Rays have established a motor pool at Hammer. Light recon vehicles and some towed-tubes. Heavy presence here."

 _"Papa two. I'm seeing what looks like a command bunker at Wrench. Some swank-looking guards and thermal shows X-Rays clustered around a table."_

"Looks like that'll be priority. Command, ETA on our backup?"

 _"The Mechtoids will be onsite in 5. Hold off till then."_

"Copy." Anderson turned and moved to rally with his squad. "Paulo will hit the rear, I'll take out the artillery pieces, and we'll have our Mechtoids pressure the front. The rest of you guys, stick to cover. You don't have the heavy armor, so just watch our backs." After a series of nods, he smiled. "We're going to go real loud boys. Make it count."

 **Shanxi, Turian Command**

Orinia watched as Desolas's shuttle climbed up into space. "I don't like this," she whispered. "This is a new race, probably just reaching for the stars, and we slap them down like this."

"They were breaking Citadel law," Victus replied half-heartedly.

"They weren't part of the Citadel! How is a new race supposed to know what our laws are?"

"You got me. Most of us aren't too happy with what we're doing here. Only ones who are all in are that little pyjack Vyrnnus and the General's little brother."

Orinia scoffed. "I think that Vyrnnus could care less as long as he and his men get to kill something. Sometimes I wonder why he hasn't taken his men into the Terminus."

"Well anyway, we do have orders. Might as well-" Victus was cut off when a shuttle exploded nearby, the blast flinging both officers to the ground. "Uragh, what-"

A striped green armored figure appeared from the smoke, grabbed the two and pitched them toward the underbrush like ragdolls. Orinia felt her shoulder erupt in pain as she slammed into a rock. Victus skidded face first on the grass before coming to a stop. He lifted his head a few inches before a boot planted itself on his back and a glowing red rifle muzzle came down near his face. He heard a small scuffle before he saw an alien dragging the Captain past him by the arm, which was dislocated if the expression of pure agony on her face was any indication.

Having secured some valuable intel, the Predator turned to join his squadmate and the Mechtoid in obliterating the post. While the Mechtoid contemptuously ignored the rifle fire and hosed down every tent with its autocannon, the two X-COM elites moved forward. One of the figures who he'd spotted in the command bunker lunged at him with a long knife and a fist of swirling blue energy. Not wanting to let the enemy touch him, the Predator caught him by the arm and rammed the knife handle into the flailing wrist of the X-Ray, which discharged the blue energy into a nearby tent and blasted the upper frame, flipping it over. The Predator then used both his augmented musculature and the powered Titan III armor he wore to fling the X-Ray into the squad that was evidently following him.

Saren Arterius watched in horror as Captain Vyrnnus flew, spinning through the air, and bodily slammed into the squad XO. He heard the snapping of bones from the collision, and then he instinctively dove away as the armored monster jumped absurdly high before landing ON his squadmate, crushing him. As the monster pulled out a glowing red pistol, Saren decided to run. Keying his comm to a private frequency, he prayed that it would get through.

"WE'RE UNDER ATTACK! THESE GUYS ARE MONSTERS!"

 **The Kyrinnus**

The captain of the ship pressed the headset harder against his head. "Can you repeat that, sir?"

"I'm ordering a full bombardment of the city. If these primitives have more monsters like this, we need to eliminate them now!"

"Sir, are you sure that's a good idea? Orbital bombardment of a habitable world is illegal!"

"Those things that my brother is fighting down there are abominations. If this race is willing to create things like this, our laws won't mean much to them. Open fire, now!"

The captain looked up to see the bewildered crew focused on him, waiting for instructions. He swallowed nervously, knowing that he'd be damned one way or the other, before he made his choice.

"You heard the general. Open fire."

 **Shanxi, Rally Point Crescent**

"For me? Aw, you shouldn't have, Escobedo."

"Don't let it go to your head, jefe. We're not at that stage of our relationship."

The rag-tag platoon laughed with the exception of the Mechtoids. Anderson felt pretty good. It was a stroke of luck that they captured some of the commanding officers of the enemy force. When reinforcements arrived, they would definitely have good intel. Plus, the mission was a good morale booster for the Militia. The first major offensive they'd run with incredibly limited personnel against an enemy in a superior position, there had been incredibly few casualties. The forward staging areas had been wiped out. The enemy would have to think twice about moving forward so slowly after establishing themselves.

Victus marched awkwardly, trying to keep his eyes forward rather than on his fellow captive and ignore the fact that their hands were tied together. This did not help when he tripped over a protruding root and went down, pulling on Orinia's arm and eliciting a sharp gasp of pain. The alien who'd grabbed them from before hauled them up on their feet effortlessly with one hand, and said something unintelligible before prodding them forward with a red pistol.

Levity aside, Anderson turned his attention to making their way back without drawing attention. Even with six powered-armor-wearing soldiers, if the X-Rays caught them out, they would hound them endlessly or call in an airstrike. He would feel much safer when…what was that?

Victus and Orinia looked up as well. It was a sound they'd both heard before in OTS, and it was normally a sound to be welcomed. Not at this point. "No…" he whispered. "Desolas, you idiot!"

"They're firing on the city…" Orinia breathed.

Paulo followed the captives' gazes upward, and felt a chill when he saw kilometer-long streaks coming down from the sky. Then the ground _rippled_ underneath them.

 **Shanxi, Militia Command**

General James Williams pulled himself off the ground and wiped the side of his face, staring in slight annoyance at the bloody streak that came off. Then he grabbed his XO and they both stumbled toward the bunker exit. "What the hell just happened?" He snarled into the radio.

"General! The city…i-it's" Williams's blood ran cold and the two men double-timed it outside, and froze.

"Mary, Jesus and Joseph…"

The section of the city closest to him was lying in flaming ruins. A titanic dust cloud rose from the impact craters where the enemy's warships had fired. He heard an inhumanly high-pitched screech and looked up to see another round of steel rain falling from space.

"Get down sir!" The XO pulled the stunned general down onto the ground and they both covered their heads as the streaks touched the city again.

 **The St. Helens**

Admiral Kastanie Drescher closed the video feed of the bombardment and turned back to the downcast image of General James Williams.

"I'm sorry, Admiral. I should have done better."

"You couldn't have known that their commander would go that far. We're fortunate enough that only 300 of your soldiers were killed in the bombardment. That's better than thirty thousand potential civilians."

"But I-"

"We're almost there. Get your men together for a counterattack. We can talk about this afterward."

After a moment, the downcast general nodded and closed the hyperwave channel on his end. Drescher looked to her comm officer, who nodded.

"We're coming out at the edge of the system. Once we do, the _Bell_ will release its Firestorms, and hold position. The rest of the fleet will split off, prepare for an in-system jump closer to the enemy fleet, and wait until the _Bell_ gives the go-ahead."

"Yes ma'am!"

"Captain Hackett, what's our ETA?"

"Approximately twenty minutes, ma'am."

 **The Kyrinnus**

The crew was silent, particularly the XO who wondered what the consequences of this would be. Nobody in the fleet seemed to agree with the orbital bombardment, but no one had the courage to really speak out against it. And this in spite of the general having gone down below after his brother to coordinate operations on the ground, and therefore not being present to reprimand anyone for questioning his orders.

The XO looked at the visual feed, seeing the alien city burn beneath them. For a young race to reach up only to be ruthlessly crushed from space, there would certainly be bad blood over this. _You could have refused, coward_ , a voice inside whispered. _That was an illegal order against a race that did nothing to deserve it. You could have done what was right, and you chose to bend over._

He sighed to himself and made a mental note to go see a service counselor once his tour was up. _Might as well get used to staring into the mirror every morning from now on…_

"Captain, unknown signatures detected!"

He frowned and turned to the sensor officer.

"Clarify."

"Sir, they're approaching from around the planet's star. Signature somewhat resembles the ships we fought before."

 _Of course. If this race felt okay in activating the Relays, they probably had other ships elsewhere. But likely not as much._ "Bring the forward element around the planet to meet them. Leave the rear guard to support the ground."

He eyed the tactical feed. These signatures were awfully small, though larger than the ones that Captain Orinia had detected at the beginning of this whole incident, three weeks ago. And they were spread quite thin for their size. Why have such tiny units be spread so far out…

That was weird. There was a large blotch much farther out that the computer had only just detected once they cleared the star's mass-shadow.

"Unknowns have stopped moving, sir! Holding steady at approximately twenty light-seconds."

 _Well beyond ship engagement range. It's almost like they're reconnaissance drones. But that larger group…they probably deployed from that. That group is still too far away. But they have energy weapons. They fire at c, so they can-_ "All ships, evasive maneuvers!"

Just when they were starting to obey, the first volley of fusion lance fire from the Firestorms smashed into the fleet from both sides.

 **The St. Helens**

" _Bell_ just gave the order, ma'am."

"Good. Execute."

 **The Kyrinnus**

The XO watched in open mouthed horror as the ludicrously powerful weapons from the flanking contacts instantly disintegrated three of his ships, including General Desolas's previous command, the cruiser _Rotham_. _That wasn't an energy weapon! That was a mass accelerator with an explosive payload!_ He had no time to wonder why the Kinetic Barriers of those three ships did nothing to save them before _every single contact_ jumped into knife-fighting range.

 **The St. Helens**

Admiral Drescher smiled. "Time to show them the real strength of the Alliance."

Hackett nodded before indicating two enemy cruisers. "Plasma projectors, fire!"

Two large pylons mounted on the Alliance dreadnought opened up to reveal menacing armatures. For a moment, they remained dark, and then the feeder tubes began to glow as the ionizers powered up. Large atmospheric ballast pumps injected insane amounts of gaseous matter into the lines which were compressed into thin streams and accelerated down the tubes to 90% the speed of light, ionizing in the process. The magnetic armatures adjusted the fields and curved the stream of plasma straight into their targets.

Kinetic Barriers can only handle so much stress, and mechanical stress at that. While the barriers did an admirable job of stopping the stream of superheated plasma from making contact, they did nothing to halt the radiated heat from the pooling plasma stream. The temperature of the barrier emitters in the hulls rose well above the component melting point in the span of a second, causing those sections of each ship's barriers to fail, and allowing the rest of the plasma to pour into the hull.

Most of the plasma actually streamed right through the opposite sides of the cruisers, and the rightward one skewered another frigate. Just that fast, three ships were destroyed by an Alliance military dreadnought.

Of course, that was without taking into account the rest of the Second Fleet's firepower. Magnetically hardened plasma cannons launched "bullets" of superheated material that on impacting with the kinetic barriers still managed to "squirt" through. Cohesion between the plasma particles and the induced magnetic field embedded into the plasma sucked the rest through the barriers and onto the hulls, burning and boiling through the ships they touched.

The Firestorms, which had used intrasystem jumps to close in, had fired their fusion lances from well beyond normal engagement range before also jumping in to strafe the enemy ships with normal plasma fire. The Turian fleet's GARDIAN lasers scored and pitted the armor of the small fighter-craft, but did not inflict serious damage.

 **The Kyrinnus**

The XO stood, frozen as the crew frantically attempted to mount a defense against this new and far more powerful enemy fleet. His eyes flickered over the tactical display, and he knew that no tactics could salvage this battle. They were outnumbered, outgunned, and facing a determined and justifiably angry enemy that his _spirits cursed general_ had done virtually everything to piss off.

The gigantic alien dreadnought swiveled its terrifying forward mounted weapons to face its' much punier counterpart, his ship. And then the streams of deadly green erupted once more. _Spirits, what enemy have we awakened?_

 _Codex: Magnetically hardened plasma_

 _While standard Alliance Plasma Weapons fire a toroid of plasma with a self induced magnetic field to contain it, the induced field is usually fairly weak, as it is only meant to contain the superheated material during its' journey to the target._

 _Magnetically hardened plasma involves compressing the plasma prior to firing and increasing the strength of the the induced field. This enables the "round" to maintain its' integrity on impact. This variant of plasma was developed as a response to increased thickness of armor or the addition of ceramic materials to better withstand heat. The toughened plasma would fracture the armor and then "squish" deep into the cracks, allowing for deep penetration and damage. Due to increased power requirements, hardened plasma is limited to vehicular armament and plasma sniper rifles._

 _Codex: Firestorm_

 _The concept behind X-COM's premier fighter/interceptor has changed little since its introduction. Current models are larger with a more powerful Elerium drive core to power the combination of the Fusion Lance, plasma cannons, and miniature Wormhole drive for intrasystem travel._

 _Standard doctrine for the Firestorms is for them to act first as deployable gun platforms. And then after scouting out and softening the enemy fleet, pilots jump in closer and strafe the target group using their less power-intensive plasma cannons. The addition of mass effect technology to the Fusion Lance allows the Firestorm the same engagement range and striking power of a cruiser. For this and the fact that carriers have a load of twenty Firestorms, Alliance Carriers are considered to be the most heavily armed warships in any fleet._

 **And there you go. This is how the Alliance uses carriers and fighters in this story. Now I realize that since the Alliance is a LITTLE overpowered, so let me explain why I didn't make them more comparable.**

 **The strength of this version of the Alliance should be quite obvious: ingenuity, adaptivity, and military hardware. They've had 150 years to improve and become strong, and they want to prevent another Ethereal war from ever happening to them. Their prime weakness is DIPLOMACY. This version of the Alliance is the exact opposite of the canonical one. Instead of being involved with the Council Races, they'll want nothing to do with it. Instead of relying on making friends, they settle on having the biggest damn guns in the galaxy and making sure people know they're willing to use them. Cerberus is an official and sanctioned organization. Udina in this story will be the voice of REASON and friendship.  
**

 **If anyone has read Renegade Reinterpretations by CollegeFool, they'll recognize that the Alliance as I've described them is pretty Xenonationalist. They'll leave everyone alone to their affairs if they're left alone to their affairs.**

 **The big lesson that the Alliance will HAVE to learn as I go through the ME storyline is that they can NOT go it alone. Much as the people might hate it, the Alliance will need to learn to make friends. Because 1v1, no race can match the Alliance in technology. But the Alliance has MAYBE a thousand actual military vessels by the end of the story, and the Reapers have SEVERAL thousand. They're gonna need help, whether they like it or not.**


	4. Aggressive Negotiations

**This scene down below is the one that spawned this story. I've wanted to write it out for a while. Enjoy!**

Chapter Three

 **Citadel, Hanger 18**

Councilor Tevos watched through the window with trepidation as the alien shuttle settled into the hangar, mindful of the mind-bogglingly large warship it arrived with. As she and the other councilors looked on, the shuttle rotated so that the nose pointed out, and several plates flipped down from the tail. The plates dropped to the ground with a crash that they all could hear through the clear plastic sheeting, before stabilizers unfolded to keep them balanced. The rear of the craft opened downward, and several figures rushed out. The first type looked very closely asari. The second type was far larger, and more heavily armored. Every individual carried a weapon of some kind, each glowing bright red. The soldiers raced to take cover behind the plates before one of the smaller ones waved his hand.

Down the ramp strode another figure, this one without any weapon in its hands. The figure stopped walking just at the line formed by the two closest cover plates. When it became clear that the alien would go no further, Tevos looked over at Spectre Tela Vasir, who nodded. As her fellow asari spoke into her headset, Jaroll leaned over.

"This is troubling." For once in his life, the salarian appeared to be dead serious.

"What is?"

"First of all, the race that Sparatus's hot headed general antagonized has allies," Tevos blanched. "Second, even though this is supposed to be a diplomatic meeting to smooth out a terrible incident, they have brought guns. They do not appear to trust outsiders that much to begin with."

Not for the first time, Tevos glared at Sparatus, who at least had the decency to look ashamed.

"Councilors, their representative will not leave the hangar. He will only speak to you directly."

Surprisingly, it was Sparatus who answered. "Then we should meet him."

Vasir looked at Tevos, who nodded, and then motioned them forward. As C-Sec officers fell in around them, Tevos nervously rubbed her hands together.

They made their way to the airlock where Vasir held them up, one hand on her receiver, until she nodded and motioned to the C-Sec officer on the other side to hit the door release. As the door opened, Vasir shouldered her rifle, knowing full well that the alien soldiers would be aiming at her and the C-Sec guards. The group moved forward as one until the alien who was unarmed held up a hand, palm forward. The message was clear: stop moving.

Vasir stopped, and wordlessly indicated the alien soldiers in cover with her chin. The figure snapped his fingers, and the soldiers stood up slowly, their glowing rifles still aimed.

"Lower your weapons, everybody," Tevos ordered. Vasir looked at her, and then slowly let her weapon dangle from her hands. The C-Sec officers did the same.

The alien commander stepped forward and the soldiers behind him moved their weapons to low-ready. There was a slight movement in the back of the shuttle, and squinted until she saw that there were two more soldiers in the back with weapons still trained.

"Paranoid or not, they are quite disciplined," Sparatus muttered.

The alien leader stopped ten meters away, and then motioned to Vasir and the C-Sec officers. Tevos stepped forward and gently put her hand on Vasir's shoulder, indicating that the Spectre should move off to the side.

The alien looked quite intimidating, standing tall with his arms behind him. A dark patch of fabric covered his right eye, and slash marks appeared above and below. It was quite apparent from his posture, if not his uniform, that this alien was a military officer who had seen combat.

And when he spoke, it was with a low and gravelly voice. "I am General Marcus Summers," he said in perfect Turian, "and I represent the Systems Alliance."

His one-eyed glare lingered on Sparatus as he swept over them, and Tevos couldn't help but feel quite intimidated by him.

"I am Councilor Jaroll, of the Salarian Union. With me are Councilor Tevos of the Asari Republics, and Councilor Sparatus of the Turian Hierarchy."

"Charmed," Summers replied without changing the expression on his face.

Tevos decided to speak up. "General, I would like to apologize for the behavior of the officer responsible for this unfortunate incident and-"

"Apology not accepted," the general interrupted brusquely, his eye fixed on Sparatus. "You are not the one I want to hear from."

Sparatus glanced at Tevos, and then carefully met the alien's eye. "The Hierarchy apologizes for the rogue behavior of General Arterius. He should have opened peaceful communcations with your people instead."

" 'Rogue behavior,' how convenient," the man drawled.

Tevos decided to take a chance. "General, please allow me to explain." She had to stop herself from flinching as he turned his gaze on her. "We have had to deal with an incursion from a hostile race we discovered back when we were activating relays all over the place. We adopted a law that forbids people from continuing to do so. General Arterius appears to have been…overly enthusiastic in his duties."

"Overly enthusiastic to the tune of nearly 300 dead colonists and a developing city on a colony planet as well as the militia stationed to defend it," he bit out in return.

Tevos winced. It did sound like a weak excuse.

"I have something to return to you," the general said after a moment, and a soldier behind him waved at the shuttle. Down the ramp, another soldier was escorting a very familiar and worn out turian.

"Desolas," Sparatus uttered in surprise.

The general was quite downcast, eyes locked on the floor as he was nudged forward with his hands behind his back. They stopped in front of General Summers.

"Like I said," the man repeated, "I have something to return to you, but not in the same condition." Without warning, something white blossomed from Desolas's chest, and the turian gasped in pain. Before wide eyes, General Summers pushed Desolas forward and he slid off of what had impaled him from behind. Tevos watched as he collapsed on the ground, and then looked back up to see that Summer's left hand was fully mechanical and emitting a white triangle. As all watched, the triangle vanished.

"General Desolas Arterius," Summers slowly announced as he drew his sidearm, ignoring Vasir and the C-Sec officers bringing their rifles to bear. "was tried by a military court and found guilty of the following crimes: mass murder, attempted enslavement, and violation of the Systems Alliance Laws of Armed Conflict. In accordance with _our_ laws, such crimes fall under capital punishment. Therefore, his official sentence is pronounced to be," he slowly aimed the pistol at the back of Desolas's head. "DEATH."

Tevos jumped when the pistol fired with a loud BANG, and the turian general's head smeared itself on the hangar floor. Ignoring the outraged shouts or his own men aiming their weapons at C-Sec once more, Summers theatrically blew out the smoke from the barrel before holstering the pistol.

"As for you, Councilors, the Alliance is willing to consider this unfortunate matter settled and sign a treaty signaling an end to hostilities under two conditions."

"And what might those be?" Sparatus asked with trepidation.

"A public apology in full view of your Citadel races for the general's act of unprovoked aggression, and material reparations. Rebuilding our colony requires supplies, after all."

Tevos let out a breath of quiet relief. Hopefully this would go no further unless Sparatus let his goddess-damned pride get the better of himself.

"And if we refuse?"

The soldier standing next to the general unhooked something from his back, set it down, powered it on, and began typing furiously on a holographic keyboard. Then he stepped back as a very familiar image appeared.

"Palaven…" Jaroll breathed.

As all looked on, another image appeared of a monstrous ship blinking into existence and firing its' main gun at the Turian homeworld. All watched silently as the hologram showed the continent hit by simulated ship's gun exploding into an inferno, and then the inferno spreading across the planet. Finally, the hologram winked out.

Mouth dry with sudden terror, Tevos looked over at the general, who still kept that frighteningly stoic glare on his face, searching for a hint of a bluff. There was none.

"Y-you wouldn't dare-" Sparatus began as rage bled through his fear.

"Would I?"

Tevos wanted to lean over and strangle the turian. Couldn't he see that this was just making things worse?!

"I have watched my planet burn before, turian," the general commented. "It is not a pleasant experience. I fought back with everything I had to put a stop to it. WE fought back with everything our race had. We only won because the enemy was foolish. I assure you that if it comes to that," he continued as his face darkened, bringing the scars into contrast, " **we will not be foolish.** "

 **The Everest**

"I'm sure they'll go for peace, Ambassador," Summers reported.

"Quite an impressive act you put on there," Ambassador Donnel Udina replied "Even I would have believed it, had I not known better of course."

"You aren't going to yell at me for overdoing the 'scary war veteran' thing?"

"Oh I'll have plenty of time to curse your existence later when I'm struggling to do my job in the face of your warmongering reputation. For right now, I can enjoy a good performance."

"Somehow, I doubt that a diplomat of your abilities will struggle that much."

"I try not to read minds or alter them, General. It has a tendency to make people distrustful, and politicians have a bad enough reputation across the galaxy as it is."

 **Citadel, the Presidium**

"Welcome to the Citadel, Ambassador Udina," Tevos said in greeting.

"Thank you, Councilors," the man replied. "Now I would like to first apologize for General Summer's behavior. He takes his duties as a soldier and 'guardian of the people' quite seriously, some would argue too much so. I assure you that he is not representative of the Alliance as a whole."

"You don't know how relieved I am to hear that," Tevos smiled tentatively.

"I should hope that his behavior doesn't overshadow these talks. I believe that since the man responsible has been punished, we should resolve this issue quickly.

"It goes without saying that we would like to put an end to this incident. The only issue that needs to be addressed," Jaroll paused to look at Sparatus. "is how much the Systems Alliance seeks as compensation."

Udina brought out an envelope and handed it to the Salarian, who in turn passed it to Sparatus. With a withering glare at the obviously amused salarian, Sparatus ripped open the envelope, unfolded the paper inside, and froze.

"This…"

"Unfortunately, the cost of rebuilding a colony is considerable," Udina commented dryly as Tevos leaned over curiously, then in shock.

"You don't say…"

"This is preposterous!" Sparatus uttered. "This would nearly bankrupt the Hierarchy! All this for one colony?!"

"Our technology is somewhat more complex than yours," Udina noted. "And our colonies are constructed to different standards. We do not expect you to repay this all at once. I'm sure we can come to an agreement on a reasonable timeline."

"Still," Tevos murmured. "these figures appear to be somewhat excessive…"

"Believe it or not, the estimate was quite a bit higher before. Those numbers are after our colony engineers reevaluated the damage to something more reasonable."

"Then I suppose we should be thankful for small mercies," Jaroll put in.

"Yes, I suppose so," Sparatus muttered in a subdued voice as he set the paper down.

"Of course, there is the other matter of a public apology. I personally find the publicity requirement an unnecessary affront, but that is what my government requires."

"Oh I don't think you'll have to worry about that," Tevos replied with a steely undertone as she glared at Sparatus.

"Wonderful," Udina clapped his hands together. "Then I will let my superiors know and we can start drafting out an installment plan. Shall we set up another appointment for our accountants to meet with yours?"

"Will a week suffice?" Jaroll asked.

"Yes, they'll arrive by then."

"Then we should be able to put this affair behind us by then."

"Absolutely," Udina agreed as he stood up to leave. "A fair warning though, regarding General Summers: he outranks me within my government. I do not approve of his aggressive tactics, but I have to work within them. Consider me the voice of moderation within my government that sometimes goes ignored."

"Consider us warned," Tevos, answered. "Have a good day, Ambassador."

 **The St. Helens**

Major Victus could feel his cheeks burning with mild embarrassment, having been stuck holding hands with Captain Orinia for the last three weeks in full view of the other turian POWs, of which not a few ribbed him for it. Determinedly not looking at each other, both officers sat in a corner, keeping an eye on the brig door where the alien guards stood, wondering what was going on in the galaxy outside.

Vyrnnus had been taken away by, only to be returned later, pale and shivering. So had Saren Arterius, who had tried to resist and been casually lifted off the floor with one hand by one of the larger alien guards before being slammed against the wall. At either side of the large and uncomfortable room were two…things. They were metallic, likely robotic guards, and they looked almost like insects with a wicked looking tail and four things that resembled gunbarrels. They angled back and forth, menacingly sweeping the room at all times.

Victus remembered the other aliens he'd seen. Small ones with large eyes and no mouth, scurrying around on all fours. Tall ones that made no sound and hefted green rifles that he'd observed effortlessly blowing steaming holes in turian flesh.

He hoped to the spirits that the alien ship they were on wasn't about to head off to a turian planet. As an act of demoralization, the guards had shown all the prisoners select footage of the reinforcements making short work of the patrol fleet. That had put an end to most shows of defiance.

He felt a sudden shift in the floor, along with several other prisoners. Then he heard some shouting outside the brig, and the guards at the door moved to the side and hefted their weapons as it opened. More aliens entered the room and gestured for the prisoners to stand up. One by one, they moved the prisoners to the door and into the hallway beyond. Victus and Orinia were the last ones to leave, with one of the robotic insect…things trailing behind him.

As they moved, his mind spun with questions, and he was sufficiently distracted that he tripped, twisted, and landed on his back. Almost as if in slow motion, he watched as Orinia stumbled from his weight pulling down on her, and she landed on top of him in a picture perfect kiss.

For the longest moment, the two officers were frozen with shock, and a few of the other prisoners turned around to see what happened. Then they laughed in spite of their situation, and so did some of the alien guards. One of them reached over and hefted the two up effortlessly.

"You'll have plenty of time for that later, lovebirds," the guard said in perfect turian.

Victus moved forward like he was in a daze and almost missed the part where they stepped into one of several shuttlecraft. He was still mostly unaware when the craft stopped moving and the prisoners all exited to find themselves on board a turian cruiser.

"Welcome back, sir," a crewmember said as he cut the straps holding the two officers together.

Captain Orinia used her newfound freedom to grab Major Victus by the shoulders and slam him against the wall. "This. Never. HAPPENED," she growled. "Not one fucking word."

"Y-yes ma'am," Victus stammered as he locked eyes with a furious female. And then she stalked off.

Victus was still standing against the wall when the last prisoner stepped off the last shuttle, and he gingerly touched his mandibles. His fingers came away with the slightest hint of disappointment.

 _Codex: Alliance Relations-Council._

 _The effects of the Shanxi Incident, or Second Contact War, are complex and long-lasting. The Alliance earned a healthy measure of respect, if not fear, for its martial capabilities. Many see the Alliance as a dangerous and unfriendly power, conflict with which would make the Rachni Wars and the Krogan Rebellions seem like a playground spat._

 _The Turian Hierarchy, oddly enough, tries to downplay such claims. Upon release of the details of General Desolas Arterius's conduct at Shanxi, many in the Hierarchy military were ashamed and have thus far gone out of their way to show that the late general is not representative of the military as a whole. The Hierarchy has made a show of always upholding its end of the armistice agreement and has tried to earn as many diplomatic points as possible with the one power in the galaxy even more ruthless militarily than themselves. Some have claimed this is out of cowardice, notably Saren Arterius, the younger sibling of the late general._

 _The Salarian Union regards the Alliance as a wildcard, unpredictable and prone to violent retribution. Rumors abound in the intelligence community of a blanket ban on significant operations near or within Alliance territory for fear of provocation. On the flipside, the Union and the Alliance have a grudging respect for each others intelligence gathering capabilities, and it is known that in the interest of generating goodwill, the STG has provided Cerberus with intelligence on pirate activities near Alliance colonies. What the Alliance may have reciprocated with is unknown._

 _The Asari Republics, upon the public revelation of the Alliance's full history (notably, humanity in particular) reacted with an outpouring of sympathy. Cynical observers note that this may have something to do with the physical and genetic similarities between species and a mutual sexual attraction. Whatever the reason, the relationship between the Republics and the Alliance can be best described as tentatively friendly. Human paranoia overshadows many honest efforts to be more open with each other._

 _Codex: Psionics_

 _Due to strict information control and fears of enemy compromise, psionics are an unknown element outside of the Alliance upper echelons. While some opt to use their gift for peace and are employed as high level diplomats, scientists and medical professionals, the vast majority of psionics can be found in the Alliance's special forces._

 _The average civilian within the Alliance is utterly ignorant of psionics. Even General Summers' status as a hero from the Ethereal War leaves out his psionic enhancements._

 _With 150 years of study comes greater understanding of psionic abilities. Common ones are telepathy, mood alteration and mental induction. Rarely, some of the more powerful psionics demonstrate telekinesis. One such example is General Summers. As psionic individuals age and eventually retire, the Alliance has grown concerned of the possibility of rogue psionics. Whispers circulate of a Cerberus project to induce an immunity to psionic power._

 _Addendum: Cerberus has been directed to examine the possibility of psionic potential within the Citadel Races as well. Initial efforts are focused on evaluating the Asari._

 **This will be a recurring thing in the story. General Summers and Ambassador Udina, bad cop good cop routine.**

 **BW never said who Tarquin's mother was, and so I figured I'd hook Adrien Victus with the future General Orinia. Good for a laugh at any rate.**

 **RandomCraziness- 1) see the Psionics Codex Entry. It never made sense to me why so many fics have humanity reveal such a powerful trump card to the Council.**

 **2) Humanity incorporated the Cydonians and Mutons only when asked, and after fierce internal debate. And they helped the Mutons partially to get them the hell off Earth. The Cydonians on the other hand actively helped with AI and Cybernetics research.**

 **Review!**


	5. When You Kick A Tiger In The Ass

**Exposition time! Since I lack the patience to do more political meetings and arguments, here's another timeline. And Shepard gets very, VERY angry...**

Chapter Four

 **2157**

 _Immediately following the release of the captured Turian prisoners from Shanxi, the Alliance made deactivation of all mass relays within twenty light-years of their territory a priority. The only exception was the mass relay at Shanxi. Per the fine print of the Armistice, the Alliance became the first foreign power to establish a diplomatic embassy on the Citadel while the Citadel races placed their own joint embassy at Shanxi. Nearly all observers state that this arrangement was purely for convenience of communication._

 _With knowledge acquired from scouring the Citadel Extranet, the Alliance begins creating contingency and training plans for its forces. Particular focus is on defensive tactics against Terminus pirates and raiders who might consider the payoff of raiding an Alliance colony to be worth the absurdly high risk._

 _The Alliance announces the commissioning of the Seventh and Eight fleets. Both new forces will subsequently be assigned to patrol the border colonies and curtail any foreign and unlawful incursions._

 _The Council races are at first stunned by the Alliance refusal to join their civilization, even in the face of obvious reasons such as bad blood, xenophobia, and a lack of mutually beneficial opportunities. They are further appalled by the fact that the Alliance does not require the Mass Relays, and thus has a tremendous advantage should a war break out. Ambassador Donnel Udina publically calls his government's refusal to even entertain a mutual exchange "a lost opportunity to forge something greater than ourselves. No matter what, we can always learn something from each other." Other lesser public figures within the Alliance decry this sentiment as dangerously naïve._

 _Per their usual doctrine, the Salarian STG attempts to covertly probe and gather intelligence on Alliance territory, only to be somewhat miffed when their probes cease transmitting after transiting to the nearest relays. One noteable incident hidden from the public eye involved an STG prowler being intercepted and remotely deactivated by a Cydonian destroyer. The prowler was returned undamaged, crew unmolested, with a very firm request to cease and desist._

 _Upon review of the After Action Reports from the survivors of Shanxi, the Hierarchy immediately jumpstarts development of their own energy weapons and powered armor, aided by Asari and Salarian contractors. Initial attempts produce crude, power hungry prototypes with limited endurance and laughable damage capability. A preliminary consensus emerges that Element Zero is simply "not powerful enough." An up and coming STG scientist Mordin Solus comments that in spite of the lack of results, he can't help but be impressed with the Alliance's ability to deny information so thoroughly. Turian and salarian intelligence services begin offering an unofficial bounty for any examples of Alliance technology._

 _In response to the Alliance announcing a fleet build-up, the Citadel races begin frantic improvements to their own warships and green-light the development of their own carrier ships._

 **2163**

 _Since the reveal of the Citadel to the Alliance Public, horror and disgust were the reactions to the news that the Batarian Hegemony practiced slavery. Public protests erupted and forced the Alliance to issue a condemnation of the Batarian Hegemony's practice of this institution, particularly in defiance of Council Law. Xenophobic protestors gleefully point out how the Hierarchy attempted to punish the Alliance for unknowingly violating a Council edict while the Hegemony has thumbed its' nose at the restriction for centuries. Tensions rise between the Alliance and the Citadel races, and the Hegemony ambassador on Shanxi replies with a very impolitely worded version of "mind your own business." Some Batarian pirate groups begin scouting for Alliance colonies._

 _The Seventh Fleet sets off to begin its patrol of the Border Zone._

 _Corporations renew requests for the Alliance to allow privatized space travel and construction of private space craft. Among the arguments thrown about is the popular one that the Alliance wouldn't need to waste military ships on ferrying civilians around. The Alliance refuses. Critics say that private space travel would be no different from owning a car, to which the Alliance replies that "a car can't go to superluminal speed and be used as a kinetic weapon of mass destruction." Groups of frustrated protesters travel to Shanxi seeking to leave the Alliance's heavy-handed restrictions and set themselves up elsewhere. To counter fears of being detained, the Alliance simply tells citizens that any who choose to leave will forfeit their citizenship as a security measure. Despite this caveat, a large number of humans end up settling within Citadel territory. To the Alliance's quiet fury, the deserting colonists bring word of their most valuable element to the ears of the Council: elerium._

 _Further refined attempts at producing powered armor and energy weapons have resulted in the production of a vehicle mounted particle beam weapon and the first turian Combat Exoskeleton. Lumbering and Bulky, it compensates for its unwieldiness by having much greater maneuverability than a tank, making it ideal for armored combat in an urban environment. Lieutenant Colonel Adrien Victus goes on record to say he considers it "a good start." News of the Alliance's secret ingredient spawns a search for any information on this elusive material to aid in the weapons development program._

 _Saren Arterius becomes a Council Spectre, despite many questioning his intentions and his well-known antipathy towards humans._

 _Having examined enough of the publicly available history of the Alliance to see the writing on the wall, the Council looks on in trepidation as the expected waves of protest against the Hegemony's policies erupt. The Hegemony representative on the Citadel sends a formal protest against the Alliance condemnation to the Embassy in the Wards._

 _The first formally approved exchange of goods across the border between galactic powers occurs under heavy guard and screening._

 **2170**

 _Diplomatic relations between the Alliance and the Citadel (the Hegemony in particular) sour spectacularly when news of Batarian pirate gangs attacking non-Alliance human colonies and establishments comes to light. Notably, a heavily damaged transport shuttle is intercepted by the Eighth Fleet near Joab, and the pursuing pirate vessel is stopped and boarded. While official reports state that the pirates overloaded the reactor rather than be captured, several navy personnel later testify over drinks that "nobody shed a tear when those four-eyed scum were spaced" and "it was funny watching their eyes boil."_

 _Navy Lieutenant Erin Shepard is selected for entry into the Predator Corps, X-COM's elite special forces unit._

 _Marine Buck Sergeant Kai Leng is court martialed for a trend of killing enemy prisoners outside of orders. He accepts a deal with Cerberus's X-CON division in exchange for commutation of a death sentence._

 _Cerberus captures an Ardat-Yakshi named Morinth, having pursued her for five years for seducing and murdering a hidden asset on Illium. Director Harper personally offers Morinth an ultimatum: work for Cerberus as an informant and wet-works infiltrator, or he would have her biotics blocked and alert her mother, the Justicar Samara, as to her whereabouts. Morinth attempts to bargain, saying that Cerberus should at least offer more than just a death threat. Dr. Core suggests researching Morinth's "condition" to find a way to free her sisters from their "sentence." Morinth agrees._

 _Non-Alliance humans flee the Terminus area to the Citadel in droves, demanding action against the lawless pirates and raiders. Not wishing to provoke war with what is effectively a rogue power, the Council refuses to send military force, citing other defensive needs. Disgusted human refugees begin to seek transport back to Shanxi._

 _The first line of turian and asari carriers leave drydock. Many traditionalists express serious doubts about the worth of the new craft pointing out that the fighters they have don't even begin to approach the destructive potential of the Alliance interceptors. The subsequent success of the new ships in simulated war-games silences many detractors._

 _Turian and Salarian intelligence services once again hit a wall, having found no information regarding "elerium" that pertains to its' production or source. Also lacking a description of its capabilities, attempts to randomly synthesize new materials result in a considerable waste of time and resources. Newly graduated Doctor Mordin Solus requests transfer to a project that is a better use of his time. As requested, the budding genius is reassigned to Project Firebreak._

 _Aria T'Loak is approached by a newly-inducted Morinth on behalf of Cerberus, negotiating for information on Batarian pirate hideouts. As an incentive, Cerberus offers to identify several Shadow Broker informants, including one of her lower level deputies, and the possibility of other valuable intelligence in the future._

 **2176**

 **Elysium**

The little boy chased after ball, overtaking it before turning around to kick it back to his older sister. Behind them, a more mature woman leaned back on the park bench, smiling as she enjoyed the sunset and the company of her eldest, back from her first six-year tour. When her daughter sent the ball sailing past her son again, she spoke up.

"You know, it's not exactly fair for you to pick on someone smaller than you, Erin."

Erin swept back her magenta hair and mock glared. "That's rich coming from the woman who drives a dreadnought in the Fifth Fleet."

"Ouch! Why does my daughter have to be so cruel?"

"I learned from the best, mom!" Erin turned to trap the ball with her foot before nimbly popping it into the air to juggle it with her knees, to the applause of her younger sibling.

Hannah Shepard shook her head, the mirth concealing the unease in her heart. At least six years of getting the shit kicked out of her and being trained on exactly how to kill someone with a tablecloth hadn't taken away her daughter's humanity. Or perhaps she'd simply been taught to fake it. She'd heard plenty of horror stories from other officers about how training broke people.

"Wow, it's getting late. Let's go find ourselves some dinner."

"Coming mom!" young Kyle Shepard answered, picking up his ball and racing over.

The family of three walked away from the park. Kyle rode on his big sister's shoulders and stared at the stars that began to poke out.

"Ooh, what's that one, mom?"

Hannah looked. "That's part of the Orion's Belt constellation. You remember what a constellation is?"

"That's what astronomers made, right?"

Erin laughed. "Astronomers don't make them, knucklehead. They just name them."

"Mom! Erin's being mean to me!"

"Erin…"

"Mom, you're at least five inches too short to pull that on me now. Mom! Come on! How can you still do that to me? I'm not a kid anymore!"

"When you have children, you'll know."

As Erin mock sulked, Kyle pointed to something else.

"How about that one?"

Hannah looked up, and blinked. "That's…"

The star wasn't twinkling, and it seemed to be getting bigger. And now there was something inside it, like…

A nearby shop exploded as a missile slammed into it. The blast threw Hannah to the ground. Before she could even wonder what was going on, she felt her daughter's hands pulling her to her feet.

"Kyle, you and mom get into a building. Find a basement, and lock the door." This voice, it was harsh, commanding, nothing like her daughter at all.

"Erin-"

"We're under attack, mom! Get to shelter! You don't have a dreadnought at your beck and call!"

"Erin, wait!" But Erin Shepard had already taken off, running at inhuman speeds in the same direction that several streaks of light were headed.

*break*

Erin Shepard had arrived at Elysium to finally celebrate her graduation as a P7 commando and enjoy some leave from X-CON, and now she would have to live up to it. She could see other armed individuals heading towards the enemy landing points, likely the local Militia. She stopped next to a sergeant.

"Who is it?" She asked roughly.

"Who are you, ma'am?"

"Lieutenant Commander Shepard, Alliance Navy. Now _who is it_ , sergeant?"

"Uh, command says it's Batarians, ma'am," the wide eyed sergeant replied as he reflexively saluted.

"How many?" Shepard asked roughly as she snatched up a laser rifle and began performing a function check.

"The _Agincourt_ reported at least sixty contacts, ma'am," a nearby militia lieutenant answered. Shepard froze.

" _Sixty batarian ships?_ "

"There are twenty frigate analogues. The rest are landing craft or troop transports. Estimate they have twenty soldiers each."

Shepard took it in and then buried her shock and worries. "Time to get to work then," she said as she slapped a battery pack into the rifle's receptacle.

*break*

"Alright you lot, while the other idiots distract the colony militia, we'll grab ourselves some nice meat for the market! Get yourselves a paycheck boys!"

The twelve Batarian pirates howled with approval and surged down the exit ramp of their ship, firing into the air as they ran down the terrified Alliance civilians.

Four humans didn't run, however. Instead they took cover behind parked vehicles and fired their laser pistols at the pirates. One lucky police officer shot a Batarian in the lower right eye, and the pirate fell backward as his comrades sighted their rifles on the cop. Two rifle-launched grenades later and there was no more opposition. The captain smiled as he took in the screams. This would be one hell of a payday.

*break*

Lieutenant Commander Shepard slammed her rifle butt up into the chest of the pirate so hard that the scum flew at least twelve feet into the air. Continuing with the motion, she pirouetted and performed a no-handed flip while holding the trigger down. The rifle, hacked and running a custom fire program, released a laser that sustained itself for a full second and overheated the chamber, swinging an arc that cut down three more unfortunate pirates. The commando then threw the rifle at the last enemy, catching him in the helmet and knocking him down.

As the pirate tried to stand up, Shepard rammed her bare fist through the cracked breastplate, crushing his sternum and driving two pieces of rib through the pirate's heart.

She let the body fall off her hand and took stock. The dropships were a smoking ruin, the pirates in the area had either fled or were dead at her feet, and the Militia commander had a look of awe on his face.

"Is that all of them?"

The commander blinked and started to answer when his earpiece squawked. He paled. "The town center! Those bastards are at the town center!"

 _Mom, Kyle…_ Shepard took off without a word, running at speeds impossible for a normal human, her shoes digging trenches in the dirt as she went.

"KYLE!"

"MOMMY!"

Shepard homed in on the second voice and saw a pirate ship lifting off with the ramp closing as the pirates dragged their last captures aboard. She spied a stray laser pistol near a burning car, snapped it up, and fired as fast as she could pull the trigger. She continued to pull even after the energy pack was spent and the ship had vanished.

"KYLE!"

 **Elysium, Shepard Residence**

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY GOT AWAY?!"

The commander of the Agincourt wished he was anywhere else besides the bridge of his ship, explaining to a Captain/Rear Admiral selectee how he'd been unable to intercept the ship with her son aboard. "M-ma'am, I'm sorry, but we were unable to get past their frigate screen. They-"

"YOU HAVE A WORMHOLE DRIVE! YOU COULD HAVE FUCKING JUMPED PAST THEM!"

"I…it was over too fast."

"WHAT KIND OF ALLIANCE OFFICER ARE YOU?! I'LL-"

"Mom! Stop it! He doesn't deserve that!"

"HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT?! KYLE IS-"

"I KNOW HE'S GONE, MOM! You saw me trying to stop them!"

"IF YOU HADN'T GONE CHARGING OFF LIKE THAT-"

"I was doing my job! What would have happened if that bigger force of pirates got through the militia?! They would have captured you too!"

The relief at no longer being the target of an angry officer's wrath turned to shame as the commander watched the captain crumple at her desk. "Kyle…my baby boy…" As Captain Shepard burst into tears, Lieutenant Commander Shepard sidled into view.

"Commander, requesting a pickup, sir. I'm going after them."

The young officer could tell through the video feed that the woman's glowing violet eyes promised horrible things should he even think of pulling rank and refusing based on regulations.

 **Tartarus**

"I trust that neither of you will have any problem with these orders?" General Summers finished.

"None sir," Shepard replied.

"It'll be a pleasure," Kai Leng answered.

"Good." As Summer's hologram winked out, Shepard turned toward Admiral Hackett's image.

"We'll be waiting for your signal, commander. Good luck down there… and good hunting, Erin."

As the two commandos left the briefing room, Kai Leng was reminded of the wrathful woman's glare and the vicious beatdown he'd experienced when he commented on her failure to save her brother. This would at least be one mission where he'd really need to reign in his dislike of her, since he doubted he'd be able to kill her and get away with it.

Shepard entered her quarters and began a final check of her equipment. As she went through, she looked up every now and then at the soccer ball on her cot. She picked up her last piece, a long and wickedly sharp knife, and gently caressed the edge as she recited her unit motto.

 _Predator! We are the fear that walks, and the terror that stalks!_

She slid the knife into its sheath.

 _Predator! When we hunt, we kill! Better write your will!_

She slid a power pack into her personal rifle.

 _Predator! Go ahead and run! It'll make this fun!_

She slung her web gear over her armor, and reached for her helmet

 _Predator! Today's the day, and we'll make you prey!_

She slid it over her head, engaged the seals, and took one last look at her brother's ball before shutting off the lights and closing the door. As she walked to the dropship, she flashed back to the image of the pirate who forced her little brother into the escaping freighter.

 _Today is the day, and I'LL MAKE YOU PRAY._

 _Codex: Project Jaeger_

 _The product of Cerberus's research into inducing immunity to psionics, the Jaegers are the Alliance's best assassins. With gene-mods and meld enhancements far more extreme and unethical than even the mainstream military would ever allow, each is an individually crafted killing machine, exquisitely trained and equipped, capable of going toe-to-toe with the galaxy's greatest threats._

 _Where the Predator Corps functions as a rapid deployment team to spearhead advances into hardened enemy territory, the Jaegers are meant to go anywhere in the galaxy and eliminate any target X-CON deems worthy. Such targets may range from a single individual to entire organizations and military units._

 _J-01/Lieutenant Commander Erin Shepard - Designation: Hunter_

 _J-02/Buck Sergeant Kai Leng - Designation: Ghost_

 _J-03/Operative Miranda Lawson - Designation: Witch_

 _J-04/Subject Zero - Designation: Banshee (pending)_

 _Codex: Plasma projector_

 _The iconic main weapon of the Alliance dreadnought strikes fear into every potential enemy. Where Council dreadnoughts are intended for use at ranges of thousands of kilometers and are useless in knife-fighting range, the Alliance dreadnought thrives in it. Doctrine dictates that the dreadnought should use its' drive to move in as close as possible to an enemy formation and unleash deadly green fire through multiple ranks or elements if possible._

 _So long as the weapon has matter to inject into the ionizer, the plasma projector can continuously fire, carving up enemy units in front of them with impunity._

 _During recent events, pirate vessels have attempted to jump away after a dreadnought has used its drive in order to nullify its strengths. It should be mentioned that the plasma exits the armatures at .9c, granting the ship a much longer engagement range than Alliance doctrine would suggest._

 **So, Cerberus has the Jaeger program, and General Summers is sending TWO of them to Torfan. Overkill, much?**

 **I actually didn't plan on having the commander be there when her brother was taken, but it just flowed.**


	6. Plan On Dealing With Its' Teeth

**Here it is, the last backstory chapter before ME1 begins. After this, I will slow it down and the chapters will likely be much longer. Also, I never played ME1. Only 2 and 3. So I'll have to do some research before I post them.**

Chapter Five

 **Torfan**

Sylack Koruun duly entered the ship's codes into the IFF system, observed as its status flashed green, and cleared it for approach. He leaned back in his chair and idly indulged in the game that many traffic controllers play. Where did these ships come from? Who paid them? Who might they have pissed off? The last he heard, the only planets out that way were the astonishingly well-hidden ones belonging to some other two-eyed race. What did they call themselves again? Hew-mons? Hoomans? The technician neither knew nor did he care. That was far above his paygrade as a Hegemony corporal.

Life in the Hegemony was only comfortable for the higher castes. Most batarians, 91% of them, came from the middle and lower castes, like he did. And none of them had a prayer of ever reaching officership or significant influence within the Hegemony. As a result, the most popular form of employment for a Hegemony citizen was either soldiering or piracy and raiding. For some soldiers either hated by their commanders or confident in their skills and desiring a few more digits in their paychecks, they served as both.

He himself was paid a pittance extra in credits to be stationed out here at one of the Hegemony's "unofficial" installations for "collaborators and mercenaries." He yawned. That description fooled absolutely nobody, but all he was interested in was the cash in his personal accounts and an easy duty station. He had no interest in trying for something more, like his old dormmate back in Basic Training. Balak was it? He'd gone on to be selected for the SIU, and was now one of the incredibly oppressive secret police who ensured that the Hegemony's iron-fisted rule persisted over its people. Something in Sylack's spirit bridled at the injustice inherent in the system, but he had long ago decided to let others risk life and limb to reform the government. He'd be happy to find a wife and settle down with a military pension someplace in the Terminus once he retired, and leave behind the scum that he was paid to deal with.

He eyed his omnitool. Perfect timing, his relief should be here, and then he could go down to the bar for a booth and some Thessian wine. His bunkmate had snorted at his taste in liquor once, only to discover the same truth he had known since before he'd enlisted: the asari make some _damn good booze._ He'd never be able to afford the finer spirits, the ones steeped for nearly 800 years, but what was considered cheap for an asari tasted otherworldly smooth to his rough and less-experienced tongue.

The door hissed open, and he stood up. "Same old, same old," he called as he turned to greet his relief. "Nothing but the usual scumbags."

"Couldn't have said it better myself," an unfamiliar voice replied. Sylack's eyes widened into focus an instant before a long knife separated his head from his shoulders.

Leng kicked the severed head away and sidestepped the bloody spray from the neck arteries. Disgusting creatures, he thought to himself as he approached the terminal and slotted a special chip into the port. The screen blanked out, flashed, and then reappeared with the text in English. The assassin scrolled through, looking for manifests, and then recording the docking numbers of the ships that had landed in the last week that were still here. Finally, he sent the message to Shepard's microcomputer. "All done on my end, Hunter. Your turn to shine, if you can."

Shepard had been busy quietly evading the guards to map out the facility and find the hangars. She didn't bother responding to Kai Leng's jab at her competence with anything other than a click-click. She waited for the group of three laughing pirates to pass under her before releasing her grip on the pipes and soundlessly dropping thirty feet to the floor below. She sprinted through the tunnel until she reached the door, and pressed her ear against it. Waiting ten seconds, she decided to risk opening the door herself and manually eased it open just enough to squeeze through, hoping she didn't trip any sensors in the process.

The flight line was huge. She could see that most of the workers and permanent staff used carts to move around, which was out of the question for her, of course. She tore down the hallway as fast as she could without marking up the floor from her passage, pausing occasionally to peer into each hangar before she stopped at one, fourteen down from her entrance point.

There it was, the freighter that she had last seen Kyle on board. She crept over to it, ready to run for cover at the first hint of trouble. The boarding ramp was down and there were no guards to be seen. But there were several fueling hoses hooked up and an electrical cable. Not planning on staying then, it seemed. She'd better hurry.

She first moved to secure the bridge, finding no one along the way. She slipped a chip into the flight computer, waited until it flashed green, then pulled it out. The next person who tried to start up the ship would have to enter in a passcode before the computer would boot. She briefly wondered how the Alliance had coded this thing to work so well with unfamiliar computers before shrugging. Some questions were best left unanswered.

With the ship now immobile unless either she or Kai Leng attempted to fly it away, she began searching for the captured colonists. There were only three locked doors, as it turned out. One was the captain's quarters. Another was the engine room. And the last was the jackpot. Shepard opened the door to find herself staring into the faces of several colonists. Shock gave way to relief, which Shepard desperately stifled by shushing the prisoners. She scanned the faces until she found him. For one moment, she was just Erin Shepard again, and she hugged her little brother.

"Ssh, it's okay. I'm going to get you out here," she whispered while her brother cried into her armored chest. "Just wait. I have to go do something, okay?"

Kyle wiped his eyes and nodded silently, and Shepard stepped out of the room and carefully relocked it. "Ghost, I'm here in Hangar 14. Guard the ship."

Leng bit off his instinctive response to tell his fellow commando to fuck off. That was her brother on the ship, and she wasn't the one with an exploding collar around her neck. "Fine."

It took him an hour to reach her position, and then Shepard left to position herself to start the carnage. Leng's blood bayed for death, and he eyed the flight-line technicians with the Hegemony emblem on them. More disgusting freaks. Well since he couldn't kill real pirates from this position, he'd settle for them.

*break*

The captain was feeling pretty good. He'd done it. He'd made it big. These precious bits of meat would earn him fortunes as slavers paid for the exclusive bragging rights to own an Alliance human as a slave. Too bad about the other crews, but their demise was his advantage. The Hegemony would pay him even more as a hero who braved and outwitted the vaunted Alliance Military to snatch them from under their nose.

"Another round for everyone!" he hollered at bartender, and the rest of the pirates in the lounge cheered. This was the life, he thought as he leaned back to enjoy the music and the atmosphere. Respect, fame and fortune would be his. He swore he could even hear the screaming fans.

And those screams were awfully loud. Weren't fantasies and daydreams supposed to be pleasant?

He opened his eyes and was greeted with the sight of blood. The bartender's head dripped crimson from its place in the hand of a dark armored figure. A figure that looked very similar to the slaves in his cargo hold. A figure with red hair that was glaring at him with glowing purple eyes.

He instinctively reached for his weapon when he froze as pure and utter terror suddenly overwhelmed his mind. The woman was suddenly the only thing he could see, and her visage turned demonic as she dropped the head and slowly walked towards him. Weren't there other pirates in the room? Why weren't they shooting? Why wasn't anyone helping him with this monster?!

Literally paralyzed with fear, there was nothing he could do to stop the demonic woman as she casually pulled out a knife and stabbed with it so fast that her arm blurred for a second, and then his world was nothing but pain and darkness.

Shepard sheathed the knife, grasped the blinded pirate captain by the head with one hand, and squeezed. Before the horrified eyes of every drunk pirate in the room, the batarian's skull crumpled with a loud and wet squish. She then turned slightly and threw the body at the bar where it smashed against the liquor shelf. And the pandemonium started.

The few pirates who still packed their sidearms yanked them clear and attempted to shoot her, but she lunged at them from across the room so fast that she appeared to teleport. One moment, she was still standing where the pirate captain had been sitting, and the next, she had already thrust a stiff knife-hand through the chest of the nearest armed pirate. She quickly snatched the man's pistol and fired off two shots, breaking their weapons. Then she crushed the pistol in her hand and used the impaled man's body as a ram to smash into another.

By now, many of the pirates had started to run for the exits, only for the first few to be crushed by the suddenly sealing doors. They turned around as one to see the demonic woman ripping the heart out of another pirate with her hands. Then she turned and just as her blood-streaked face came into focus, the pirates all suddenly felt like pyjacks in the face of a pack of hungry varren. As she slowly stepped forward, fingers curled menacingly into claws, many made the mistake of meeting her glowing purple eyes and all knew that those were the eyes of a predator.

They also knew that none of them would leave the room alive, or in one piece.

*break*

"Stay back! Get the hell away from me!" The batarian screamed as he shakingly aimed his pistol at all over the place, eyes wide and searching for the shadowy demon that mercilessly butchered his fellow workers.

"Ah, smell that?" the invisible demon called. "That's the delicious scent of fear, little alien. Scream a little more for me. I want to savor it as you die."

"I had nothing to do with these guys! NOTHING! I just work here! I just top off spaceships!" The dockworker howled in pain and terror as a shallow slice appeared on the back of his neck. He whirled around and fired wildly.

"Hm, almost got me that time. Just kidding, you're nowhere near my level, scum." And another thin line of blood appeared across the right thigh.

"I wonder how you'll break," the voice continued as more random small cuts appeared on the dock worker's body and the hysterical batarian fired at nothing. "Will you cry? Will you beg? Will you offer me everything in your worthless life? What will it be?" it asked mockingly. "What will you do as I slowly rip you apart and you can do nothing to stop it?"

"Please!" the terrified worker dropped the spent pistol, whimpering. "Please…don't kill me…I'll do anything you want…"

"Oh, you'll do anything I want?"

"Yes!" he screamed. "Anything! Please!"

"Alright," and Kai Leng stepped out of thin air and raised his blade. "I want you to die."

*break*

The doors to the bar room exploded inward and the rest of the pirates on base surged into the room and stopped dead.

The room was a terrifying testament to the…thing that slaughtered their comrades. Blood spatter and streaks stained the furniture. Tables were shattered, some with viscera on the jagged edges. Pieces of armor lay all over the place, and not a single visible face, attached to its owner or not, was recognizable.

"Enjoying the view, boys?"

All rifles aimed upward at the source of the voice, a woman in dark armor and dark red hair, reclining on the edge of the large decorative lamp, supported by bloodstained gauntlets.

"I hope you don't mind me redecorating," the woman commented as she slid off the lamp and dropped to the floor. "This place was dreadfully dull. Then it got exciting for a bit, and we had fun. Oh yes…" she giggled psychotically. "we had so much _fun_."

The pirates shifted uneasily, many of them with instincts screaming to get away from this deadly and deranged creature, but it was as if something held them in place.

"They sure look like they enjoyed it," she continued, gesturing at the body parts strewn all over. "I liked playing with them, but I'm bored now, and they don't want to play with me."

And suddenly, it was like the weight of the galaxy crashed down on them as the woman raised her face and allowed them to gaze into her glowing purple eyes. The eyes of a supremely dangerous predator.

"So I was wondering if you'll play with me instead? It'll be fun, I promise…"

One of the pirates screamed with terror and hosed the woman with fully automatic fire, but she was no longer there. She was ripping off his arm and then shoving the broken bone through his face.

Shepard laughed as she grabbed the helmet of the nearest batarian pirate and slung him around like a ragdoll, swatting down his comrades with flailing legs before leaping up and smashing his body into a pulp on the floor. As she shook the viscera off her hand and faced the rest of the terrified mass, she drank in the fear from the mass Induced Panic that was the trademark of the Predator Corps. It delighted her. It delighted the monster she had become in order to survive the brutal training environment, the monster that finally had a chance to show its face to the galaxy, the monster that would hunt every slaver who would dare try to take every Kyle from every Hannah within the Alliance.

And the monster roared as it lunged for its prey.

 **Citadel, the Presidium**

Councilor Valern hit the power switch and the screen flickered off, leaving the councilors staring at a darkened display.

"Goddess…" Tevos whispered.

"Spirits above…" Sparatus breathed.

"That footage was recovered from a now-deserted pirate base on the planet Torfan. We've identified the soldier in the footage as one Lieutenant Commander Erin Shepard. According to the prisoners who were returned to us by the Alliance, she had a younger sibling who was taken during the attack on Elysium. As you can see, she was…decidedly displeased."

"Evidently," Tevos replied hoarsely.

Sparatus shivered. "I for one am glad that they were willing to sue for peace in the aftermath of Desolas's mistake."

"Has the Hegemony said anything in response?"

"Not yet, but I believe they will if for no other reason than to use this as an excuse to paint the Alliance as uncivilized barbarians. You have to agree that it would not be difficult to get that message across with video of an Alliance soldier ripping batarians apart with her bare hands."

"Public perception," she murmured. "We should counter it with the truth. The Alliance went there to rescue their people and freed ours as well."

"I'm afraid that the truth tends to have less value than the outrageous nowadays, Tevos." Valern countered. "And we're missing one very important point."

"And what's that?" Sparatus asked warily."

"How did these pirates obtain the location of an Alliance colony world? Think about it. The STG has the resources of a galactic power, advanced technology, and highly trained personnel, and we have failed to find a shred of information that the Alliance hasn't allowed us to see. But these criminals with no support or very limited support from the Hegemony, whose intelligence capabilities are laughable outside of their own territory, somehow did what the STG could not?"

"Are you sure this isn't a case of jealousy, Valern? There is the Shadow Broker and his freelance network. If they have the money to pay for that kind of information, they could have acquired it from him."

"That is a possibility," Valern admitted. "And if it is true, I certainly would be jealous of their capability to succeed where we failed. But that's unlikely. The Alliance is nothing if not thorough, and security is of utmost importance in their culture. We've seen that in how paranoid they are over interplanetary travel. They seem to think that every potential non-military pilot of a spacecraft has a deep and hidden desire to use their ship as a weapon of mass destruction against a city!"

"That's insane! Our civilization vets out people like that before they can acquire a pilot license, and our companies build tons of safety measures into spacecraft to prevent things like that!"

"It may be insane, but because of their insane paranoia, their security measures are similarly insane. And 'insane' does not mean 'bad.' No, Tevos, I doubt very seriously that the Shadow Broker or the Hegemony acquired this information on their own. That leaves only one option: someone within the Alliance released it."

The room fell silent. "But why?"

"That is not the question you should be asking, Sparatus. The Alliance is, to put it plainly, the strongest military power in the galaxy, and the most aggressive. And someone just provoked them, someone who is powerful enough or foolish enough not to care about the consequences. The question is which one are they? The party you know nothing about is often the most dangerous one of all. If this unknown party can do this to the strongest force in the galaxy, what might it do to us?"

"Pardon me, councilors," a young asari maiden said as she entered the office. "but the Alliance Ambassador wishes to speak with you and the Hegemony Representative at your earliest convenience."

*break*

 **The Olympus**

Director Harper was pushed up against the wall by a very angry Admiral Hackett.

"What is your game, Jack?"

"Admiral, I don't know what you are talking about."

"Don't play coy with me," Hackett growled. "Those pirates were prepared when they arrived at Elysium. One of my captains goes on leave just as her daughter returns from your division with a personnel file so heavily redacted you might as well just paint the whole damned thing black. I hear whispers of some secret enhancements and gene mods, and three days into their family vacation, these pirates come out of nowhere with intel that had to have come from within the Alliance. This has your fingerprints all over it!"

"Unfortunately," Harper replied as he gently but firmly pushed the admiral away from him. "it was necessary to test the Commander and how she was coping with her training and augmentations. We needed to simulate a stressful combat scenario that would allow us to observe her and adjust her training to her benefit."

"That sounds an awful lot like an excuse!"

"I admit that we could have taken better precautions, but Shepard needed to be engaged on the ground. Simply having the commander speak with our medical personnel wouldn't have given us a clear picture of her mental state. I take no pleasure in having planned out the tragedy at Elysium, Steven. I would have done better if I could."

"You shouldn't have done it at all!"

"In the end, the civilians were all rescued, the Alliance will rally around this atrocity, and we can continue our work without risking a psychiatric breakdown."

Hackett clenched his fists, seething with rage, but reigned it in enough to merely point a finger at the director. "I don't approve of your methods. I will not stand for you endangering my people again!"

"And who exactly might 'your people' be, admiral?"

Hackett held his tongue, not trusting himself to answer that question.

"We each have our methods. I try to avoid such troublesome ones whenever possible, and I will keep your warning in mind. All I ask is that you keep in mind that we have the same goal: the safety of the Alliance. Good day, Steven."

 **2177**

 _Following the Elysium Raid, the Alliance publicized what it called the Torfan Example, a brutal and bloody harbinger of how it intended to handle further proxy aggression on behalf of the Hegemony. Footage of the raid raised questions regarding the capabilities of the military elite, prompting the public admittance of heavy gene-modding and cybernetic augmentations.  
_

 _The return of a number of pirate captives to their homeworlds by the Alliance Fifth Fleet earns a significant amount of goodwill and somewhat offsets the bloody image of rampaging avengers that the Torfan Example creates._ _General Marcus Summers loudly and publically questioned how the Council can support the Hegemony when the Hegemony flat-out refuses to abide by their anti-slavery laws. Emancipation supporters throughout Citadel space cheer the resulting announcement of a Council resolution condemning the Hegemony. The Hegemony withdraws its representative in response and severs diplomatic ties.  
_

 _Once again, the Council is horrified by the lengths to which the Alliance is willing to go. They are forced to reconsider long-established laws against excessive genetic modification and augmentations, and ultimately repeal the laws in question. The militaries of the Citadel immediately begin research into combat mods and re-purposing medical augmentations for conditioning of soldiers._

 _The Citadel races are stunned to hear that the Council has also decided to repeal the Treaty of Firaxen. Observers see this as a reaction to the Alliance's ruthless and continuous build-up of strength, noting that it was likely provoked by fears of the Alliance going all-out should the Hegemony do something stupid._

 **2179**

 _Following another massed attack by Hegemony-backed pirates and slavers that was shot down by the Seventh Fleet, the Alliance reacts by declaring war on the Hegemony and revealing a terrifying new weapon: genetically targeted disassembler nanites. A warhead containing this weapon was fired at Kharshan, and resulted in the planet being overrun by nanite swarms within a standard month. The Batarian Navy's attempts to evacuate surviving Hegemony officials were interrupted by the arrival of the secretly built Alliance Ninth Fleet, which promptly destroyed every ship in the system before blockading the relay and watching as the planet was consumed by the nanite swarms. The Ninth Fleet subsequently deactivated the swarms through an unknown method before departing, leaving a world empty of Batarian life._

 _With the deaths of nearly the entire Hegemony government on Kharshan and the mysterious assassinations of Hegemony representatives, the Hegemony itself collapsed and the caste system fell apart, leaving billions of batarians on former Hegemony worlds free to choose their status for the first time in centuries, and revealing to the galaxy as a whole just how repressive the Hegemony had been towards its own citizens. Reformists, eager to seize the chance to build a new future for their race, quickly fashioned a more democratic government and petitioned the Council for protective status. The Council has deferred its decision pending investigations by the STG into the situation._

 _The Council decides to prevent any information leakage on the Alliance's use of nanobot weaponry, for fears of potential riot. The STG is ordered to "drop everything and divert all efforts into figuring out how to limit or nullify the effects of weaponized nanites."_

 _Garrus Vakarian is inducted as a Spectre._

 **2183**

 _The Alliance gains a large measure of galactic goodwill by sending large amounts of aid packages to the new Free Batarian Federation. Cynicists imply that the only reason the Alliance is doing so is to prevent the creation of more pirate groups along their border territory.  
_

 _The Council has accepted the Free Batarian Federation and Hierarchy forces patrol the border between the new state and the Terminus Systems. The Alliance withdraws the Eighth Fleet from its Border Colonies, and tentatively begins searching for new colonies to expand to._

 _Surprising everyone on both sides, the Alliance agrees to grant the Hierarchy a chance to observe Alliance Military Doctrine in a large wargame as a symbol of full reconciliation, marking the end of the Armistice Reparations. The Hierarchy sends Nihilus Kryik to observe while temporarily embedded on the Alliance Prowler, the Normandy, under the command of Captain David Anderson._

 _Codex: Travel within the Alliance_

 _In place of privatized space travel, the Alliance maintains a system of public interplanetary transportation. Shuttles arrive and depart planetary departure stations and scheduled times much like municipal subway and bus transportation. Citizens are charged per trip, and trips may be booked similar to airlines back on Earth. The system is maintained and run by trained and vetted military personnel. The system can also be activated during wartime to for supply and logistics to a battlefront, at the cost of straining or ceasing interplanetary travel. If a destination falls under attack, the Alliance can quickly isolate the system and alert travelers to the cancellation._

 _Corporations have long fought to break the military monopoly on interplanetary travel primarily for monetary gain. Several company CEOs see a great opportunity to make money by privatizing the service and redirecting the money travelers pay the government toward their own coffers. Alliance paranoia has held fast however, and looming hostilities and potential pirate raids have driven many citizens away from the idea of allowing non-government directed travel._

 _Codex: Muton and Cydonian status_

 _Little is seen of either race within the Alliance, and nothing at all without. Those Mutons who serve within the Alliance military do so out of gratitude for the uplift efforts on the part of Humanity. However, the majority of them remain in the two colony systems established for them with human aid, seeking out their own racial identity. Xenosociologists theorize that they will eventually integrate fully into the Alliance culture once they can create a sort of pride for their species. Aside from living and reproducing on their new homeworld Litrella, the Cydonians are rarely seen outside of computer and technology research institutes or Alliance Intelligence. Much of the border surveillance has been delegated to them since as naturally evolved AI in organic cyborg bodies, they do not tire or suffer from boredom, making them ideal for lengthy and tedious details._

 **And there's the kind of unethical things Cerberus does. Harper leaked information about Elysium for four reasons:**

 **First, to fully test Shepard's mental state in combat. X-CON's medical personnel cannot examine her psyche directly because the Jaeger Program made her immune to other psionics. Thus, they have to observe her behavior.  
**

 **Second, to see what forces pirates and raiders bring against the Alliance in order to establish a pattern of behavior.**

 **Third, to generate more popular support for a drive to neutralize the Hegemony, which Cerberus has detected is undergoing a military buildup with bad intentions against the Alliance.**

 **And fourth, to demonstrate to the humans who left Alliance territory that the Alliance can protect them far better than the Citadel can in order to entice them to return and cut down on potential security leaks.**

 **Quite a sly bastard, that Jack Harper, eh?**

 **While I know that many wanted to see the Batarians get bombed dust, the reason why they "got off easy" is because I'm trying to stick to the angles that Bioware wrote up for the aspects not affected by the crossover. They put in the codex that the Hegemony is not truly representative of the average batarian. I tried to present the average batarian view at the beginning of the chapter as an example. The Alliance did what they did to avoid getting into a long and drawn out war. They knew that the Batarians had a centralized government structure with most of the oppressive components of the Hegemony clustered on Kharshan.**

 **So they just nuked it with nanites. One planetary genocide later, suddenly there's no Hegemony directing the rest of the Batarians. The hostile government is gone and with it the backing for the pirate groups. Mission accomplished. They didn't help the new government until four years later because that wasn't their concern. The Alliance is ruthless and violent, but they are also efficient. Plus, after almost suffering genocide themselves 150+ years ago, mainline humanity wouldn't be so eager to inflict it, no matter how bastardly the enemy is.**

 **To clear up some confusion, X-COM is simply a legacy name for the Alliance. At this point in the story, it's a leftover. X-CON is an combat oriented division of Cerberus, which functions as their own private military.**

 **Lay Down Hunter- In my defense, it's been a while since I've played any Mass Effect, and I don't have access to my PS3 right now. Thank the military for that. Now that said, by all means tell me when I've fucked something up. That is what the review button is there for. I can't research absolutely everything, and I am mostly writing by the seat of my pants. But if it improves the story I'm trying to tell, I'll probably take your suggestions on fixing it.**


	7. And So It Begins

**Here it is, the start of the series. Enjoy the first mission on Eden Prime.**

Chapter Six

 **Shanxi travel station, The Normandy.**

Nihlus Kryik mentally reviewed the file he'd been given prior to departing the Citadel for his assignment. _Commander Erin Shepard, the "Butcher" of Torfan, a graduate of the Predator Corps, extensive gene-modding and augmentation, can punch straight through standard issue armor with her bare hands, executive officer of the SSV Normandy under Captain David Anderson, also a graduate of the Predator Corps and a veteran of Shanxi. And someone I haven't laid eyes on since I threw my bags on this ship._ The ship XO had been nowhere to be seen since almost two weeks ago, and the few times he asked the captain, the man only replied with one word: "Classified."

But according to the crew, the commander was due to return today, and so here he was, standing next to Anderson in his best Hierarchy uniform at the top of the Boarding Ramp and staring down at a woman who looked almost exactly like the photo in the file. Dark red hair and purple eyes, with an icy glare that almost certainly was one of the reasons the woman was single. His trained eye noted how she carried herself as if prepared for an attack at any time. Idly, he wondered what kind of training the Predators subjected their recruits to. In all likelilood, what they were exposed to would probably qualify as war crimes under their own laws. That's how it was when he was in Blackwatch.

"Welcome back, Commander," Anderson said as the woman reached the top of the ramp, shifted her bag, and saluted. "You've been briefed on our visitor, of course," he nodded at Nihlus.

The Spectre extended his hand, mentally bracing himself and preparing for the worst. "Nihlus Kryik, ma'am. I've heard quite a few stories about you."

He was not disappointed when the woman nearly crushed his hand before shaking it. "Most of them classified, no doubt," she replied as she moved past the two.

"Spirits, that hurts!" Kryik shook his hand, trying to get some feeling back. Anderson laughed.

"Once was enough, even for me."

The boarding ramp began to close and the two turned to head toward the ship elevator.

"And now that we have everyone, it's time to head toward our next stop."

"Eden Prime, was it? The Advanced Infantry Training Center?"

"Yep. We'll be there for the Graduation Ceremony of the next class. I remember mine back in 2150, standing at attention in the first rank of my company while General Summers himself presented the class awards."

Kryik smiled. "Another bit of common ground for us soldiers, eh? I was near the back of my cabal while Primarch Corrin Victus gave the commencement speech and attached the Banner of Menae to our guidon."

"Wow, I didn't think the Hierarchy used guidons. I hated that stupid flag."

"Well we don't actually call it that. That's the translator's closest guess. And I don't get how you could hate it. That thing was amazing."

"Until they make you the guidon bearer."

Both men laughed as they stepped off the elevator onto the bridge level. Anderson stepped up to the command station and grasped the hand rails. "Eden Prime, Joker. Double time it."

 _"Yes sir, right away sir, would you like some fries with that, sir?"_ The voice of the prowler's pilot echoed over the intercom to general laughter.

"That depends on the recipe. Can yours beat out my secret Cajun Spice?"

 _"Only one way to find out, sir!"_

Anderson stepped off the station and made his way to the front with Nihlus in tow. "You run a tight knit crew," he noted.

"I leave the hard-assing to the commander," Anderson explained. "They might as well get it out of the way before she's back in business here."

Joker glanced behind himself as his fingers danced over the controls. "Sorry sir, traffic is backlogged a bit. We'll probably get our clearance to leave in twenty minutes.

"Any idea what's causing the snarl?"

"There's a trash hauler heading to Eden Prime ahead of us. Pilot said that some archaeological institute paid big money for this shipment."

Anderson raised his eyebrow. "Sounds like digging equipment. Maybe a university made an interesting find. What's the reason for the holdup?"

"Some idiot probably lost the paperwork. That's my best guess."

"Be nice to the paper-pushers, Joker. They handle your paycheck, remember?"

"Sir, this baby is all the paycheck I need," the pilot thumped the bulkhead for good measure.

Anderson shook his head. "Carry on, Mister Moreau."

"Aye aye, sir."

Anderson and Kryik left the cockpit. "Join me in the mess hall? Maybe we can swap stories."

"I'd be happy to, but then I'd have to kill you," Nihlus replied, deadpan.

"Oh, you've heard that song too?" and both soldiers shared another laugh.

*break*

Shepard didn't bother flicking on the lights in her quarters before setting her bag down and throwing herself on the reinforced cot. She knew she wouldn't get any sleep. She never did. But lying there with nothing to do in her personal quarters allowed her something approaching relaxation…

 _"Fucking move your ass, trainee! Boom! You're dead! Too goddamn slow!"_

 _"I said, HOW MANY OF YOU ARE STILL OUT THERE?!" She gasped as the old one-eyed instructor smashed a foot into her abdomen, three inches past her ribcage, flipping the steel chair she was cuffed to backwards. As she struggled to breathe through white-hot pain, the man's face swam back into view. "You bloody well will answer me!"_

 _She tentatively eyed the rack of mechanical arms and the ominously glowing vials of Meld, shivering in the cold air of the lab, covering herself with her hands as a technician beckoned her forward._

 _Terror overwhelmed her senses. She scrabbled backward into the corner as an armored commando slowly and menacingly approached her…_

Or at least it would if she didn't still have flashbacks to her time in training or the Jaeger augmentations. Not for the first time, she cursed X-CON. She might have been borderline psychotic before Torfan, but at least she wasn't bothered at the time by her flashbacks. It was only after Cerberus medics sat down with her for extended psychiatric counseling that they began haunting her.

She knew that Anderson would want to know. He was her current "handler," after all, but she always handled things on her own. "When you want something done right, do it yourself." That was what her mother had always told her. And so she'd get through this. Eventually (she hoped) the flashbacks would go away. In the meantime, she'd just have to push it aside.

Time to get back to routine. Back to being a second-in-command, and maintaining discipline amongst the crew. She'd always found it annoying how lackadaisical they were in their duties. She had learned early on in her career that discipline and speed was life. You kept your equipment in order, you stuck to the plan, you always had a backup, and you moved with a purpose. Stop even for a second, and you could be dead. She had lost count of the number of times she'd nearly been killed during Predator training for messing up just a hair.

She got off the cot, and began unpacking her gear, inspecting it carefully, piece by piece, before setting the equipment where she could quickly get to it. Then she stripped out of her travel uniform and showered before donning her service uniform. Might as well get this over with.

*break*

Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko looked up from his desk as a familiar figure approached. He stood and snapped to attention. "Welcome back, ma'am."

"Thank you, lieutenant," Shepard replied and waved for him to stand at ease. "What do you think of our visitor?"

"I'd say he's been enjoying the events, ma'am. The Second Fleet's 420th Scout detachment put up a good show against Admiral Hackett's 29th, the Praetorians. Fifth Fleet is still the reigning champions again. I hear that Rear Admiral Shepard won quite a few bets for a lot of people. Rear Admiral Mikhailovich took her by surprise though." He paused, realizing he'd gotten _quite_ a bit sidetracked. As Shepard smirked at him knowingly, he hastily returned to answering the question. "The Spectre and Anderson have been knocking back a few. I'm fine with it, if you ask me, ma'am. It keeps him from asking too many questions around here."

"If I didn't know any better, Lieutenant Alenko, I'd say you were trying to come on to me," Shepard commented amusedly. "what with how you've paid attention to what shenanigans my mother has been up to."

"I-I just thought you might be interested to know, ma'am," Alenko stammered.

Shepard laughed and turned to leave. "You're cute when you're flustered," she called, leaving her sputtering subordinate at his desk.

 _Yep,_ she thought coldly behind the veneer of levity, _I can still trip men up when I need to._ Of course, she preferred to let Witch handle seduction, but it was always good to have a tool. _Plus, he actually might be genuinely attractive if he would grow a fucking spine. That's the only reason he hasn't made Commander yet._

She wasn't particularly surprised to hear that Anderson had been getting chummy with the X-Ray. He had been the one to teach her more subtle methods of dealing with enemies, or potential enemies. That last distinction was one that she had struggled to learn. The two were not the same. And it was hard, since she was a very direct type of person.

"Shepard, over here!" Anderson called as she walked into the mess area.

"Captain," she replied as she came to attention and saluted.

"As you were. Why don't you grab a seat? There's nothing really to do before we reach Eden Prime."

"Were you ever there, commander?" the turian asked. "The captain was telling me all about how much he really hated marching around carrying a three-and-a-half meter stick with a flag on it."

Shepard eyed her commanding officer, who nodded, before grabbing a cup and filling it with water. "Oh I was there. Worst six months of my life," she said, with a dramatic undertone. "I spent every day except the last week asking myself what the hell did I drink before deciding to try for SpecOps."

"And after that, I got to straighten out all the bad habits that the instructors drilled into her. You probably know how it is."

"Oh I can imagine," Nihlus answered with a slight slurring. "My first CO in Blackwatch called every new graduate 'shinies.' They made us shine our faces bare so they could see how badly we wore ourselves out during war exercises in training, and to spot us easier. And they made whoever didn't do a good enough job the cabal leader for the exercises, or 'magnets.' They were the first ones to get shot with training rounds. I don't have to tell you that by the end of the first week, they pretty much just picked us at random for that. Then we got out and I was told to stop scrubbing my face every morning!"

"Sounds like Instructor Lyons," Shepard commented. "That bastard had us push an APC up a forty degree hill for a week while defending it from instructor teams with paintball guns. He rode in the front seat and he'd stomp the brakes whenever he felt like it. And then he'd kick the shit out of us by himself every day for getting paint on his 'baby.' And that was just our third week."

"Good times," Anderson laughed. "Did you hear about how the Admiral's boys ran circles around the Second Fleet?"

"Alenko told me, sir."

"It's fascinating to me how you humans have redefined space warfare," Nihlus leaned forward drunkenly. "I never paid attention to space combat, being a ground-pounder and all, so your wargames have been kind of a crash course for me."

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "Out of curiosity, what are you drinking? Isn't our alcohol incompatible with you Dextros?"

"That's a lie. I'm no biologist or chemist, but I do know that alcohols break down the same way in our bodies as yours. That stuff you see in stores on the Citadel that they call 'turian brandy' is a sales gimmick for stupid people. Anderson called this stuff vodka. Seems to hit me just as hard as our race's Frelto."

"Frelto?"

"Uh, sorry, that didn't translate well. Best I can describe it is that if you can drink two shots and not puke, you're probably an alcoholic, or you're dead."

"When you say we 'redefined space warfare,' what do you mean?" Anderson asked.

"Well all I know about our methodology is from vids. Dreads are big and slow, and they're mainly long-ranged. You want to kill a dread, get a frigate and fly circles around them. Your ships focus on diving in, attacking up close for the most part, and if that doesn't work, you reposition before the other guy can react." Nihlus tipped back the last of his shot, eyed the glass, and then set it down without filling it again. "That's the complete opposite of how we fight, and you guys make it work."

"The farther away you are in space, the more reaction time the enemy gets when you try to hit him. The closer you are, the less time there is and the less space the enemy has to react. That's why we train that way."

"Well it's damned effective," Nihlus stated. "I know that our Primarch has been trying to find ways to counter that sort of thing."

Shepard leaned forward, eager to obtain intelligence from the drunk turian as Anderson had no doubt planned from the beginning, when Joker's voice came over the comm.

 _"Captain, we just received clearance to enter the docks. Got a warm welcome all ready for us._

"Go ahead, Mister Moreau. Well that's our cue to get ready." Anderson said. "They'll run the final evaluation exercises tomorrow, and then you'll get to see the graduation ceremony."

"Looking forward to it," the Spectre answered. "Now could you please give me a hand? I don't think I can find my room while the ship is spinning."

 **Eden Prime, Unknown Ship**

"Arterius-Commander, we are within range. Enemy patrols will be unable to intercept us before we reach the destination."

"Finally…" Saren breathed as he made his way to the cockpit to peer over his pilot's shoulder at the planet. After all these years, this would be the first part of everything. Desolas would be avenged. "Send the signal, and then full thrust down. The sooner we move, the less of these monkeys we'll have do get through to leave this planet."

 **Eden Prime, AITC Command**

"Company, attench-hut!" the honor guard NCO called out.

"HOOH!" was the response.

"REPORT!"

Nihlus stood as the picture of turian military discipline as three soldiers, two officers and an enlisted man, walked out toward the line comprised of himself flanked by Captain Anderson and Commander Shepard.

"Brigadier General Gary Whittleson, 2nd Frontier Division, sir!"

"Colonel Natalie Halsey, 81st battalion, sir!"

"First Sergeant Ferris Naylor, 81st battalion, sir!"

The Spectre crisply returned the salutes, and then the honor guard NCO continued. "The 81st Battalion welcomes Captain David Anderson, Commander Erin Shepard, and Liaison Nihlus Kryik to Eden Prime! Please enjoy your stay at the Advanced Infantry Training Center!" And with that, the ceremony was over.

"Good to see you David. How's life?"

"It's a lot better than it was when I was here as a student, sir."

"Oh, no doubt! And it's a pleasure to meet you, mister Kryik."

"Nihlus will be fine, general."

"Well shall we get on with it, sir? Never did like this ceremonial stuff."

"I'd like that very much, and I'm fairly certain you outrank me, general. I never hit above the equivalent of an infantry captain."

"Well you're a VIP, Nihlus," Anderson corrected. "and a foreign dignitary. So you automatically rank everyone here."

"I think you mean POS," Nihlus joked. "Most ground pounders, myself included, never really have high opinions of VIPs."

"Ahem, about 'getting on with it,' sirs?"

"Oh sorry, Natalie. Come on, gentlemen and ladies, the festivities await."

*break*

"Exercise, exercise, exercise!"

"That brings back memories," Anderson commented as they stood in the back of the big control room observing as the instructors sprang into action, coordinating other instructors in the field. "So who's being evaluated and what's their objective?"

"I believe this is the 212th, sir," Sergeant Naylor replied as he consulted a clipboard. "Their scenario is to attack and secure a caravan of POWs for thirty minutes, simulating a rescue mission against determined opposition. The instructors have prepared five attacks."

"That sounds like a really nasty one," the Spectre said as he observed the camera feeds.

"Normally, the instructors would only do three additional tests for each scenario," Shepard explained. "This is the top graduating class. They can choose to do this for bragging rights, basically. It's the special mission that they earned."

"They've got guts, at least."

Meanwhile, Colonel Halsey was speaking frantically into her headset. "Say again, Eden Command?"

"We're under attack by some kind of robots! We just had a massive impact on the edge of the colony, and then these things came from out of nowhere!"

"Stand by. I'll send out a response team."

Anderson winced as another camera feed showed a beam flashing by. "Live fire, Sergeant? You've gotten rougher on these poor boys and girls, haven't you?"

"It would seem so…" the First Sergeant answered with confusion. Where did that come from?

"Sergeant Kelly, report in! Damn it, Sergeant Preston!"

"What's going on? Two instructor teams dropped off the net!"

That got Shepard's attention. She was about to ask the instructor chief what was going on when she noticed something in another camera feed. A squad of graduates was being fired upon by bipedal metallic shapes.

"What in the spirits-!"

She turned toward Nihlus. "I'm guessing you know what those are."

"It's the geth," he whispered. "But why? They've been in behind the Perseus Veil for centuries!"

Shepard roughly grabbed the Spectre and walked him over to Anderson, just in time to hear from the colonel.

"An attack on the colony?"

"Yes sir. We don't know what we're fa-"

"Something called the geth, ma'am. Nihlus knows about them."

Anderson faced Nihlus, who shrugged. "They're renegade AI from Citadel Space, made by the Quarians centuries ago. This is the first time anyone's seen them come out of their nebula. I can't say anything else."

"That's more than any of us know, so I'd appreciate it if you can lend us some support. I realize this sort of impinges on your diplomatic status, but-"

"If you're asking me to help fight them, I'm all for it. I packed my armor in my bags."

"Shepard, go with him. Gear up and take a shuttle out there to find out what's going on."

"Yes sir!"

Anderson turned to the colonel. "Seems I'll have to cut the visit short, Natalie. I'm heading to the Normandy, and we'll try to provide extra support from the air."

"Thank you, David."

 **Eden Prime, Forest Training Grounds**

The woman snarled as she rammed the muzzle of her training weapon into the chest cavity of the alien robot and pulled the trigger. At such close range, it didn't matter that the lasers were set to low power. White steam erupted while crackling let her know that the enemy platform was now inoperative. She didn't pause there, lifting the gun and rushing forward while still holding the hulk of metal in front, letting it absorb the incoming fire before she smashed into two more of the blasted things. She stomped on the head of one, crushing its single eye before ramming her weapon muzzle into the second one and finishing that. Then she eliminated the last one.

The adrenaline wore off, and the graduating soldier was suddenly overcome by exhaustion. Her mind also chose that moment to bring up images of her classmates. Second Lieutenant Ryan, enemy fire stitching across his training armor and cutting him nearly in half. Gunnery Chief Connors, who she'd last seen clutching the stub of his right shoulder and bleeding out against a tree. Master Sergeant Fellows, her face missing after a shot passed clean through the bridge of her nose and the residual heat from the shot curled the skin off her skull. A wave of nausea accompanied with her exhaustion forced her to rip off her helmet before emptying her stomach of the MRE she'd eaten just four hours ago. She continued to dry heave as footsteps approached from behind. At least they didn't sound metallic.

"Wow, this is unexpected" a flanging voice that she recognized as turian commented appreciatively. "I guess those trainer weapons do pack a punch."

"Report, trainee," a female voice ordered.

Forcing herself to stand and mindful of the puke on her chestplate, the woman saw the Commander's stripes and saluted. "Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams reports as ordered, ma'am."

"What happened?"

"They hit us from the east, ma'am. At first, we thought it was the instructors, and then our platoon lead bought it for real."

"So they came from the crash site, did they?" the turian behind the officer commented. "You maneuvered pretty well, chief. How were their tactics? Did they try to keep you from moving the way they came?"

"They blocked us off pretty good. I wasn't really paying attention to that. I just wanted to get these bastards back."

"You've done better than the rest of your unit," the red-haired woman said. "and you now have the most experience against them. That means you're now under my field command authority. Understand?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Good. Clean yourself off and grab your helmet. And take this." She tossed a laser rifle to the trainee. "Mind the muzzle, and let's go."

 **Eden Prime, Normandy**

 _"There's something that these 'geth' are after, sir."_

"We'll see what we can find from up here, Commander."

" _What about the colony, sir?"_

"Lockdown is in effect. The civilians are moving into the bunkers, and the response team is augmenting the Militia's perimeter. Focus on your mission. If these geth came here for something, find out what it is."

 _"That's the plan, sir."_

No sooner had Anderson killed the comm when Joker called over the ship. _"Uh, captain? We got big trouble, and I mean BIG trouble."_

"How big?" Anderson asked warily.

 _"Try two klom, sir. Unknown hull composition, doesn't match any known signatures, big-ass mass effect drive signature. It just appeared in atmosphere."_

Anderson swore. "Any damage down below?"

 _"A few houses folded, but no casualties at the moment. Wait, power-build up in the forward armatures and-oh god!"_

Anderson raced to the cockpit just in time to see two militia frigates separate into semi-slagged pieces. "What just happened?!"

"That thing used some kind of beam weapon to shred those frigates, sir! Popped their shields like nobody's business!"

Anderson frowned. "Pressly, take over coordinating for Shepard and Kryik on the ground. Hanson, put me on fleetwide broadcast." He waited until both officers confirmed and complied. "Attention all units, this is Captain Anderson of the Alliance Navy prowler Normandy. Effective immediately, all spacecraft in system are under my tactical command. Our target is the two-kilometer X-Ray. We don't know what that thing is, but it sure isn't a friendly. All units commence evasive maneuvers. That thing has a highly accurate weapon that is much faster and longer ranged than standard mass effect weaponry. Harassment tactics. Circle and fire from behind if you can. Charge up your drives, and plot an emergency evac point for when that thing targets you. Stay alive people. The colony's safety is our number one priority." And right now, he really wished that the prowler had its original weapon systems instead of the retrofitted shipborne lasers that had been swapped in as a security measure.

 _"This is Lieutenant Commander Bales of the Kestrel! X-Ray is heading planetside! That thing's going to land on the colony!"_

"Volley fire! Draw its attention! There's a ground attack happening down there, and that's probably their orbital support! We have to keep it busy as long as we can!"

 **Eden Prime, Forest**

"Say what?!"

 _"Enemy ship, two-kilometers, heading down toward you. Whatever it is, it's laughing off the defense cannons."_

"Great, just fucking great. Do I have to take out a dreadnought on foot?!"

 _"The captain's commanding the fleet above. They're going to try and get that things attention and draw it off. No guarantees though. Better hoof it, ma'am. I don't know how long we'll last up here."_

"Damn it!"

"I only heard part of that, but it sounded pretty bad," Nihlus commented as he moved to keep pace with the angry commando.

"Enemy dreadnought in orbit. Whoever this is, he's gone all out to get what he wants."

Behind them, Ashley paled. "A d-dreadnought, ma'am?!"

"No point worrying about that, Chief. Captain Anderson is handling it. We have our job to do: find out what these things are after, and push them off-world."

No sooner had she finished then they stopped short, and Shepard motioned for them to hunch down.

"Looks like they're digging for something," she said, noting the large number of geth patrolling the area. "We're not getting down there by ourselves."

"I can get in there," Nihlus whispered. "Find a good position and hole up, draw their fire, I can sneak past them."

"Good idea. Signal us when you're ready."

Nihlus silently sprinted off and Shepard turned to Ashley. "Hope you're a good shot."

"Top of my class, ma'am."

"Better be enough."

The turian settled into the treeline and clicked his earpiece three times. Seconds later, he heard the telltale screeching of the laser rifles. As one, the geth troopers moved wordlessly in the direction of the two commandos. _No exchanges. Wireless communication? Central networking? It'll be interesting to find out later._ Once he was certain it was clear, he moved carefully down into the dig site, noting the large blackened craters. _They used explosives to clear the top layers, and then they brought in the tools. Fast excavation, but they're afraid of damaging what they're after. Movement._ He moved behind a box, and then peered out. _A turian?!_

"What are you doing here, Saren?"

His colleague turned to face him. "I'm securing an artifact for the Council. Just fought off the geth who attacked us." He quickly looked over his shoulder. "Maybe you can help me get this out before they come back." He was forced to dodge as a red beam cut through where his chest had been. Finding cover, he sighed. So much for that ploy.

"Liar. I was briefed on every detail of my trip into Alliance space. You were never mentioned, and the Council wouldn't be stupid enough to send you into human territory when everyone knows you hate humans."

"It was worth a shot," Saren replied as he rose up and fired a few shots from his pistol, missing as Nihlus sprinted for cover. "A pity you're defending the humans."

"A pity you've turned traitor, Saren! You brought the geth here and that strange dreadnought to attack Alliance space! You're basically sparking a war with the Alliance! Your hatred of humans could lead to the Citadel's destruction!"

"So short sighted. But I don't have time for this. Open fire."

Nihlus paled, and raced to find new cover as he heard two rocket launchers fire off. He was pelted by fragments from the explosions as he settled behind a crate.

"Nihlus! Where are you?"

"Shepard!" he called. "There's an artifact down here! That's what they're after!"

Saren cursed. Of all humans, it would have to be one of the Alliance's elites. He let the geth buy time while he ran to the artifact, the Beacon, that he'd come for in the first place. Ignoring the sounds of the Alliance soldier and his old colleague tearing through them, he touched it, and his mind _expanded._

A beam of blue light flared up, and Shepard decided to forget about the geth and just race for the center of the dig site. "Out of my way!" she snarled as she shoulder checked a machine and jumped twenty feet up to land on the central platform. As she lifted her arm to shoot at the turian standing near the artifact, something smashed into her torso, flipping her backwards and off the platform.

"So close, yet so far away, human." She heard the turian say as the thing flew upward back onto the platform. She gathered herself and jumped up again, firing as soon as she cleared the lip of the platform. The turian stood on a board that wavered backward and forward, dodging her fire as he raised his own rifle. "Soon, this will be a regular sight in the galaxy," he said as he fired at the artifact. "you down below us, where you hairless pyjacks belong. It's too late to stop it. Soon the galaxy will change, Shepard."

Shepard cursed as the turian sped away on that strange hoverboard. "Nihlus, he got away."

"What about the artifact?"

"He shot it a few times. I think it still works. Let me see."

Nihlus and Williams climbed up to see the Beacon sparking as Shepard moved toward it. "A Prothean Beacon," he breathed. Then he remembered something he'd read about Prothean artifacts. Something about them being touch activated. And it was damaged. "Wait, Shepard! Don't get too-!"

And that's when a blue bolt of energy shot out and speared the commander in the chest.

 _Massive dark shapes hung in space, firing reddish white lances that speared unfamiliar ships…_

 _A continuous chittering noise buzzed in her ears as an insectoid biped marched forward with a strangely organic weapon…_

 _A terrible reverberating hum that shook her entire body to the core, and unbidden, she screamed in terror as a gigantic creature stared at her with a pale red eye…_

The commander flew off the platform once more, landing on the strewn debris of geth parts and remains, crumpled in a heap.

"Commander!" Williams raced to the woman's side and checked her vitals. "She's out, sir!"

"Damn it," The turian muttered. "Tap me into her comms."

"Right away, sir!"

Once the commando finished, Nihlus keyed his comm. "This is Nihlus Kryik. Shepard's out cold, but we found what the geth were after."

 _"Good for you, but you're going to need to find a way out. That dreadnought is coming down, and it's going to land right on top of your position."_

"Copy that," the turian turned to Williams, who was shouldering the unconscious woman. "Quick question, how fast can you move with her on your shoulders?"

"Only one way to find out, sir."

"Well let's get out of here fast as you can unless you feel like fighting off a dreadnought with a shirt and a flashlight."

 **Eden Prime, Normandy**

"Good to see it's not invulnerable," Anderson commented as he eyed the fading orange gash the Normandy's last strafing run had inflicted. Unfortunately, that made his ship the primary target for the alien dreadnought as it fired two beams at him while flying backwards toward the ground. "Status on the main guns?"

 _"The focus fire solution we jury rigged runs the containment system really hot, sir. We can't fire it again for five minutes until we vent the heat."_

"Pass on the solution to the rest of the fleet. If we can all fire that way, we might just be able to take this monster down."

"Sir," Pressly reported. "the Spectre reports that they found the objective. Problem is that it's exactly where the X-Ray is landing."

"That thing is picking up someone or something."

"He said the geth were after an artifact. It's apparently still there, but it's damaged. Someone shot it before flying away."

Anderson would have answered, but a sudden jarring movement threw him to the floor. "Sorry sir," Joker apologized. "had to emergency jump out of the way. Drive will be up again in fifteen minutes, then we're back in the fight."

"Can we communicate with the ground team?"

Pressly returned a moment later. "Negative, sir. That thing is really disrupting communications down there."

 **Eden Prime, Unknown Dreadnought**

As Saren landed aboard the dreadnought, an asari walked up to him.

"Once we get airborne, fire on the dig site. Destroy the artifact, and any survivors. Then fire a volley at the colony."

"Understood."

 **Eden Prime, Forest**

Nihlus gasped for breath as he leaned against a tree, sourly noting that the newly graduated commando was only mildly winded. _So much for the respiratory combat mod,_ he thought. "I don't know about you, but the more distance we put between that thing and us, the better."

Williams was about to reply when a wave of heat and light washed over them. "What was that?!"

Nihlus looked backward and shivered, seeing that the greenery starting fifty meters away had vanished, turned to molten lava. "That wasn't a bomb. I think the dreadnought fired on the dig site."

And then a loud rumbling echoed throughout the forest, and both soldiers looked up to see the dreadnought rising into the sky, shrinking and rotating. And then it fired its guns once more.

"The colony…" Williams gasped in horror.

"Saren, you bastard…" Nihlus breathed.

 **Eden Prime, Normandy**

"Oh damn…" Joker trailed off, seeing the damage the dreadnought had inflicted.

"The colony is burning," Pressly whispered in disbelief.

Anderson stood frozen, rage welling up inside as he eyed the wreckage of ships and buildings. "Find Shepard and get a shuttle down there to bring them up. This thing came from somewhere, and we're going to find out. And then," his hand tightened, crumpling a section of the plastic bulkhead liner. "we're going to make them pay."

 _Codex: Humans outside the Alliance_

 _Many are regarded with suspicion and fear by the Citadel races due to Humanity's reputation as a violent and vengeful race. A significant number used this reputation to become mercenaries and outlaw raiders. Those who choose to live by more legitimate means have often found employment in galactic corporations within the Terminus Systems._

 _A large number of them have applied for and received citizenship under the Citadel's charter, with a good fraction of them driven to join C-Sec out of their cultural inclination toward service and social justice. In fact, humans are the third largest demographic within the Citadel's police, something that the Council intelligence services regard with trepidation and suspicion._

 _Codex: Prowler_

 _The Citadel military forces did not rest on their laurels since the first appearance of the Alliance Navy. Once it became obvious that current dreadnought doctrine was outdated and useless against a far more mobile foe. Taking hints from the Alliance's usage of combat micro-jumps, the Hierarchy has begun experimenting with tactics such as jumping away to maintain distance, and take advantage of drive recharge times. Salarian researchers have looked into ways of reducing the static buildup within ship hulls or capturing it for other systems. This has produced ships with greater in-combat endurance that can maintain high-speed maneuvers and evade fire while bringing guns to bear._

 _Experimental dreadnoughts equipped with new particle beam weapons have proven able to use these tactics to emulate the Alliance Navy's performance against current doctrine, though their particle beam weapons remain an order of magnitude less powerful than the Alliance Plasma Projector. The STG has diverted as many assets as can be spared from anti-nanite research into searching for Elerium, the Alliance's fabled special element, in hopes of easing the load on a dreadnought's Eezo Core and increasing the available power of the ship weapons._

 _In response, the Alliance moved forward with the Prowler design. A semi-stealthy, lightly armed ship with an abnormally large power core, it relies on speed to deal with enemy fire while hefting cruiser-class fusion lances and plasma cannons as normal armament. The ship's true asset lies in its powerful engines, which are capable of astonishing sub-luminal travel speeds, allowing the ship to close in after enemy ships jump away and pursue them no matter what, keeping them within range of its weapons. Aiding this is the two-minute wormhole drive recharge time due to its' small size and powerful drive core._

 **In this version, because Eden Prime is a military stronghold and a response rolled out so quickly, there's none of that "fighting on a train" bullshit. Saren crashed, deployed, found the artifact, got picked up, and fired on the colony to force the Alliance to deal with the damage instead of chasing him.**

 **And Nihilus lives, of course. No, he will not be replacing Garrus.**

 **Read and Review!**


	8. More Aggressive Negotiations

**To be honest, I wasn't happy about the previous chapter. I really had to force it to work. But now we're past that, and we can get started on the fun parts. Cookies to the people who find the shout-outs.**

 **Edit: Thank you Ama for pointing out that I've been misspelling Nihlus's name.**

Chapter Seven

 **Normandy**

Lieutenant Commander Alenko sighed and ran a hand through his hair before looking back up from his computer display at the sole surviving graduate of Company 212. "I guess you're going to be assigned to us, Chief Williams. Probably not the way you wanted to outprocess from AITC, but at least you have an assignment." His attempt at levity fell flat, judging from the glassy-eyed stare that he knew was going to haunt the woman for the rest of her life. "Rack and stack in room Charlie-twelve, and go see the doctor for a post-action. You need it."

Ashley straightened and focused on the officer. "Sir, I'm alright-!"

"Bullshit. You just watched twenty three people you lived, ate and slept with for six months die right on the day you were supposed to graduate as a Predator Corps member. Your hands haven't stopped shaking since you helped me lug the Commander into the Med Hold, and you were just staring at something way outside of the ship's hull. You are _not_ okay, Chief. Bravado gets people killed."

Williams nodded slowly. "Yes sir," she saluted before turning on her heel and stiffly marched out. Kaiden could tell she wasn't going to obey the second part, but he had more important things to deal with than a traumatized soldier. Getting up from his desk, he headed up to the bridge, where the Captain and the Spectre were reviewing what happened.

"-and he tried to give me a bullshit excuse that he was there to secure the artifact for the Council. There's no way that could be true."

"Well nobody's walking off with it now that it's a puddle of slag. What happened to Shepard?"

"She tried to stop him from using the artifact, but he knocked her off the platform, shot it a few times, and left. She's out because the thing was damaged and she got too close."

"So you're saying that some of these Prothean artifacts operate by touch?"

"Our archaeologists say that contact allows them to transfer memories to a person somehow. We've never figured out the mechanism. I wonder what Shepard got from it. We'll have to ask her when she wakes up."

Alenko coughed, announcing himself behind the two. "If she wakes up, sir. Chakwas said her brainwave patterns were going crazy. She had us bolt the commander down to a table in case she has a seizure." Of course, a seizure would be the least of their worries with a psionic Alliance supersoldier, but Nihlus didn't need to know anything about that.

"Bolt her down?" Nihlus whistled. "Isn't that a bit extreme for a seizure?"

"You know she's augmented, right?" Anderson asked. "She can punch through standard issue armor with her bare hands. Now just imagine what she can do flailing around in the Med Hold."

Nihlus filed that away for reference later. "Now what I can't figure out is how the geth figure into this. They've been isolated from the galaxy behind the Perseus Veil for almost three hundred years. They've never come out, or shown any interest in what happens outside their territory. So why did they come out now? And what does Saren have to do with them?"

"Pardon me sir," Kaiden interrupted. "but what are the 'geth?' "

"Rogue AI created by the Quarians," the Spectre answered. "They rebelled in 1895 CE, and they've kept to themselves until now." He turned to the captain. "I'm surprised that the Alliance hasn't heard of them."

"I personally haven't," Anderson replied. "But I have no doubt that our higher ups have. I'd guess that up till now, they didn't think the geth would be a threat to us because they never attacked you guys for 300 years, and they'd be more likely to go after you than us."

"Yeah, I bet that's going to change real fast," Nihlus muttered. "Saren, the geth, and a dreadnought that doesn't match anything either of our governments have ever seen. The Council is going to go nuts. They'd be panicking even if Saren hadn't attacked one of your colonies and set up a potential diplomatic incident."

"There's going to be repercussions for the fact that you guys made Saren a Spectre, sir," Kaiden pointed out. "what with his grudge against us.

"'You guys?' Hey whoa, I had nothing to do with that!"

Anderson looked like he was about to say something when Lieutenant Pressly came over to him. "Excuse me, gentlemen. I'll be right back."

 **Tartarus**

Harper serenely eyed the report on the screen, taking in every detail before turning to address the woman who filled it out. "You are certain of this, Colonel?"

 _"Absolutely,"_ Colonel Halsey replied, her rage palpable through the screen even to a man lacking psionic abilities such as the director. _"The first wave of geth arrived on our colony by our own transport system. Travel logs and the last loading inspection indicate that it was loaded on Shanxi."_

"Naturally," Harper commented. "So someone smuggled the geth into our network and had them sent to Eden Prime. Someone else within the Alliance had to sign off on the shipment."

 _"Yes sir, the archaeological institute I mentioned. We found Professor Sterns and his staff. They were killed in the loading bay when the transport landed. The pilot was also killed immediately after transit using the same weaponry as the geth. No signs of anything other than geth, large mining explosives, and prefabricated equipment in the hold."_

"And the initial impact crater?"

 _"Ship remains show an element-zero based drive system. I'm sending imagery and our forensic scans. We found indications that there was at least one person aboard. Gene sequencing indicates that the passenger was turian."_

"And it appears very likely that the turian is an individual X-CON has been keeping an eye on," Doctor Core commented from behind the director. "Our archives indicate that the signature matches a Council Spectre, Saren Arterius."

 _"Isn't he the one whose brother-"_

"Correct, ma'am. It would seem that this is his revenge."

 _"That **bastard**!"_ the officer swore.

"Language," Harper admonished her. As the woman flushed in embarrassment at losing her professional military bearing, the director frowned as another thought occurred to him. "Has Shanxi Customs managed to find out where the geth shipment came from?"

 _"No sir. No other incidents, and all their records were in order."_

 _"Which means we have a traitor somewhere,"_ Captain Anderson noted as he came on the line.

"Ah, good of you to join us, Captain. I trust that your crew is doing well."

 _"With the exception of Shepard, we're okay sir. My men are eager to even the score though."_

Dr. Core frowned. "What is the Commander's condition?"

 _"Our guest says she was knocked out by a malfunctioning Prothean artifact,"_ there was a pause as Anderson turned to face something out of view. _"Make that a Prothean Beacon, sir. They store information and release it on contact with a person into their mind. Nihlus's words, not mine."_

"Prothean artifacts…" Harper noted, tapping his chin with a pen. "Doctor, please inform intelligence that top priority for SigInt is anything involving the geth and prothean archaeological discoveries. File a request to the Martian Archaeological Institute to look into these Prothean Beacons. Also, send Agent Rasa to go through Dr. Sterns electronic correspondences to see if we can find a trail."

"Right away, Jack," and the doctor left the room.

"Captain, you are on your way to the Citadel I presume?"

 _"Yes sir."_

"I will inform General Summers of the events, and no doubt he will make a show out of demanding the head of Saren Arterius. You and Commander Shepard will be witnesses once the commander is back on her feet."

 _"We also picked up a surviving graduate from AITC who went along with Shepard and Nihlus. Which reminds me: Natalie, I am transferring Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams from Company 212 to the Normandy."_

 _"Not much of a company for her to leave, David," the colonel muttered. "Take care of her for us."_

"Captain, as soon as we find any information on Saren, you and the commander will be the first ones to receive it."

 _"Sir, if I may ask, why wasn't I briefed on the geth? I had no idea what they were until Nihlus identified them."_

"That would be a failure on my part," Harper admitted. "Given how the geth have been inactive and restricted to a known area of space for three hundred years, I deemed it unnecessary to look into them. That will be rectified as soon as possible. I will also pass any new information on them along to you."

 _"Thank you sir."_

"Ambassador Udina will be waiting for you at the Embassy. You will brief him on what you know, and proceed from there."

 _"Understood. Normandy out."_

"Colonel, Agent Rasa will be arriving within twenty-four hours. You will give her all the support you can as she conducts her investigation. Pass on my sincerest apologies to the General, if you please."

 _"Yes sir."_

As the video link terminated, the director noticed the news feed. More specifically, he eyed the headline: "Spectacular failure of Alliance Transportation security, claims Nashan Stellar Dynamics." "How interesting…"

 **Normandy**

 _Reddish brown ships with tentacles slammed into the city around her…_

 _The whip-crack of hardened bones colliding resounded through the training hall as her fist slammed into Kai's bare forearm…_

 _An alien screaming in what she recognized as horror as another corrupted version of it lunged with a bony dagger-like implement…_

 _Her pounding forehead rested on the cold metal floor as she curled into a ball, plugging her ears, whimpering like a child as sinister whispers crowded out every thought in her head…_

 _She raised her four-digited hands in a futile attempt at warding off the colossus on the horizon as a beam off red descended on her…_

"GYAAAH!" she opened her eyes and gasped involuntarily as the strap across her neck bit into her trachea. Training kicked in. She looked around wildly and bit down on the urge to yell. White. Chemicals, like cleaning solvents and medicine. Hospital? Gray armatures hovered above her. _Medical lab? Not another procedure!_ She struggled to rise up only to find that her arms were pinned to the table. She gritted her teeth and redoubled her efforts-

"My goodness, Commander. Please stop. You'll hurt yourself even more."

Shepard's eyes snapped over to a woman with gray hair.

"Relax, Commander. You're safe. It's okay. You're on the Normandy in Med Hold."

"Doctor Chakwas?" she groaned.

"Yes, it's me."

All the tension flowed out of her body and she lay back on the table. "What happened?" she whispered.

"By all accounts," the doctor replied as she turned to look at the vital display, "you went to touch the beacon, and it malfunctioned. It hit you with energy and knocked you out. And when Spectre Kryik and Chief Williams brought you here, your brainwaves were going haywire. I strapped you down for safety. Good thing too. God knows how I would have stopped you by myself."

Shepard breathed deeply. "That beacon, it showed me things…"

"Oh?"

"I saw gigantic ships razing planets, people screaming, and this…thing…staring at me…"

Chakwas's mouth thinned, and she moved over to the commander, careful to keep away from her hands. She felt her forehead, pulled out a light and checked her pupils, and then put it away. "How many fingers am I holding up, Commander?"

"Four," Shepard answered hoarsely.

"And have you been having any nightmares lately? Any flashbacks, visions, things of that nature?"

"…no."

Chakwas sighed. "Commander, I was brought aboard specifically to help you. I can't do my job if you can't be honest with me."

"I can _handle_ it, doctor!" Shepard snapped. "I've been dealing with it for years now."

"Stubborn as ever, Shepard." Chakwas tapped the monitor and the restraints came loose. Shepard sat up, rubbing her throat and wrists. "I believe that Captain Anderson wanted to see you when you woke up."

"I'll be going then," Shepard growled, determinedly ignoring the pain in her ribs as she walked toward the elevator.

Anderson, Kryik and Alenko were waiting for her when she arrived on the bridge. "How are you feeling, ma'am?"

"Fine," Shepard replied through gritted teeth. "Nothing that bed rest can't fix."

"You took quite a hit there, Shepard," Nihlus commented. "I'm surprised you're up by now."

"I'm tougher than I look."

"Now that's an understatement," Anderson chuckled. "We'll be arriving at the Citadel in less than an hour. We're to head straight to the Embassy, and then we'll probably visit the Council. All four of us plus Chief Williams. We're representing the Alliance, so be on your best behavior everyone."

"Yes sir."

"Get ready for when we dock. Dismissed."

Shepard and Alenko stepped into the elevator to ride down to their quarters. "Ma'am, I think you might want to talk to Chief Williams. She's taking it pretty hard."

"I'll deal with it," she replied, stepping off and making her way to C-12. The door opened and she stepped in.

"Ma'am," Williams robotically snapped to attention.

"As you were, Chief. Captain says we're going to the Citadel. We'll be paying the Council a visit, and you're coming with us. Got it?"

"Yes ma'am,"

Shepard looked over the newly graduated commando, noting that she still hadn't taken off her training armor. "And find some real armor from Equipment Storage. This isn't AITC anymore. You're not going to run around with a T-shirt and a flashlight anymore."

"Yes ma'am."

 _Yep,_ Shepard thought to herself. _Classic survivor's guilt and shell-shock. She'll need to see the doc later._ "We land in an hour. Get to it, Williams."

"Yes ma'am."

As she left, she cast a look back into the room, noting that Williams just sat back down on her cot and stared at the bulkhead. _Damn, she's got it bad._

 **Citadel, Traffic Control**

"Alliance craft, you are not authorized to land."

 _"What the hell do you mean we're not authorized?! Check with our Embassy!"_

"I can't do that," the technician replied blandly. "You are advised to turn around and leave before the Defense fleet opens fire."

 _"You can't even pick up a phone? What the hell-"_

 _"This is Spectre Nihlus Kryik. I am aboard the Normandy, and I will authorize them through to land. Now clear it, and be quick about it. Transmitting authentication."_

"Authentication codes received. Verified and cleared. Proceed to Docking Bay 37."

 **Citadel, Alliance Embassy**

"That's the gist of it, sir," Anderson concluded.

Udina shook his head. "Well, at least this will be a lively conversation."

"How so?" Nihlus asked.

"Because I'm fairly certain that General Summers will interrupt our meeting, make theatrical demands and threats regarding this incident, and leave me to attempt to negotiate with frightened and defensive Councilors."

"It'll be a deceptive conversation, just because it involves politicians."

Udina looked over at Anderson with a mildly hurt expression. "Why must you mock my profession so?"

"Because it's easy. Politics is all about theatricality and deception. You guys sell an image and mislead the people to get what you want."

"Ah, but theatricality and deception are powerful agents only to the uninitiated. And we are initiated, aren't we, David? You are soldiers. You use theatricality to help you deceive the enemy and make short and long term gains just like I do. Politics is the war of public opinion."

"We're getting off topic, sir," Shepard interjected. "How hard do you think it will be to get the Council to cooperate?"

"That will depend on if the general shows up and how he defines 'cooperation.' If he shows up at all, my job will likely be that much more difficult. The general is an ardent proponent of 'gunboat diplomacy.' It's certainly effective at terrifying other people, but cooperation requires a delicate and sensitive touch."

At that moment, an aide walked up and whispered into the Ambassador's ear. "Alright then, we're cleared to head out. Best behavior please. Mister Kryik, after you."

One quick taxi ride later, and the party of six stepped off at the Presidium and entered the massive Citadel Tower. As they entered the Council Chambers, Shepard took in the surroundings before eyeing a slight shadow near a tree that shifted when she tried to focus on it. She raised an eyebrow and subtly shifted to put herself between it and the ambassador, who paid no mind.

Spectre Jondam Bau frowned as he shifted to place more of the tree between himself and the red-haired woman. He was surprised that she spotted him from so far away, but she was a veteran special operator. At least it wasn't the diplomat. Now _that_ would have been downright embarrassing.

There was a holographic figure speaking to the councilors as they walked in. Williams eyes narrowed into a glare when she recognized who it was.

 _"…deny any involvement with this 'Eden Prime.'"_

"Saren, the Alliance ambassador has told us that he has eyewitnesses placing you at the scene."

 _"And you believed the humans, Sparatus? Did he happen to say who these 'eyewitnesses' are?"_

"That would be me, Saren," Nihlus called out. "You've got nerve, lying to the Council like this."

Shepard's eyes brightened with fury as she watched the figure turn around. _"Oh look, the Butcher herself. I'm surprised that the Council even allowed an animal like you into the Citadel. You sully it with every step you take."_

"Saren," Shepard growled. "I don't care where in the galaxy you are. You will pay for what you did to the colony. I will make sure of that, _personally!_ "

 _"Is that so?"_

"Run and hide like the coward you are," Shepard snarled, her voice steadily rising as Udina slowly put some distance between himself and the angry supersoldier. "But I swear that nothing will protect you from me! Not geth! Not weapons! NOT ARMOR!" she finished with a howl of rage.

Saren's figure sniffed and he turned to address the Council again. _"And this is their eyewitness? Such an unbiased account they have,"_ he commented dismissively. _"This is a waste of time. Good day."_ And the image winked out.

Nihlus spoke again. "Councilors, I was there at the geth dig site. Saren was on the platform near the Prothean Beacon they dug up. Commander Shepard and Chief Williams, who are both here with me, also saw him." He leveled a hard gaze at the three politicians. "I would like to think that my testimony at least counts for something."

"You are certain of this, Kryik?" Valern queried. "You can verify that it was indeed Saren who was there?"

"I didn't get a recording, but I know it was Saren! He walked, talked and acted like him!"

"You have to understand that we can't just take eyewitness testimony out of hand," Sparatus interjected. "Not with what we know of the Alliance's capacity for body augmentation and physical disguises."

"Excuse me?" Anderson erupted. "Are you insinuating that we burned our own colony world?!"

"Please, Captain," Tevos held up her hands. "We cannot simply jump to conclusions for something of this importance. Saren is, for all his faults, a Spectre with an exemplary record. He is an icon, for better or worse, of our civilization. We must have absolute proof before we can declare him a rogue agent and traitor at the behest of a foreign power."

 _"Then perhaps this will suffice,"_ a new voice announced. Udina slapped his forehead as a much taller holographic figure sprang out of the central display. _"I have the preliminary examinations of our investigations right here in my hand,"_ General Summers thundered. _"A research team from the University of Joab sent a communique to what they thought was a Citadel archaeology institution. Turns out it was intercepted by Saren Arterius. He played them and arranged to 'support' a Prothean excavation on Eden Prime, sending a bunch of geth disguised as digging equipment to Shanxi, through your customs service, I might add."_ The general shot a menacing glare at the Councilors before continuing. _"From there, someone in the Alliance smuggled them into a transport for Eden Prime, where they killed the research team, including one Dr. Jacob Sterns, and led Saren right to the colony in a separate ship. Oh and by the way, he brought a dreadnought with him. Really ugly one. Looked like this,"_ The hologram changed to display the familiar cephalopod-shaped ship. _"and it did this to the colony,"_ Once again, the image changed. Now it showed six massive gashes across the small civilian outpost, the damaged sections still glowing from residual heat. Then the image changed back to the general. _"Is that proof enough for you?"_ he asked dangerously.

Udina watched resignedly while the Councilors quailed under the general's furious stare. "W-what do you want," Tevos stammered.

 _"What my government wants is your word that you'll cooperate. That means openly declaring him rogue and allowing us to search for him and bring him to justice. What do I want?"_ he raised his artificial limb and made a fist. _"I want Saren Arterius's head."_

"General," Udina called out. "might I suggest that terrifying the Council may be somewhat counterproductive?"

 _"I'm clarifying exactly what the Alliance's position is."_

"Very good," the ambassador continued deadpan. "You've done a marvelous job in clarifying it. Now allow me to do my job, sir. Rest assured, I will get their cooperation for you _if you let me do my job_."

The general looked over, nodded, and vanished from the display. The ambassador sighed. "My apologies, Councilors. As I said years ago, General Summers takes his duty quite seriously."

"None taken," Sparatus answered, wide eyes still fixed on the platform as if expecting the one-eyed general to return at any moment.

"I had intended to present our position on this incident with considerably more tact, but that plan has gone out the window. My government would like to investigate anywhere within your territory and search for any information regarding Saren that will lead to him being hunted down."

"What?! You want unrestricted access within our borders?!" Sparatus exclaimed. "That is ludicrous!"

"Councilors, please consider what I have to work with. This is another colony attack by another rogue turian. As the Hegemony discovered, my race does not allow something to happen twice without retribution. My government absolutely requires that he be dealt with. And if we can't get your permission to do so, they will assume you are aiding him. The consequences of such a thing are not to be contemplated."

"Be that as it may," Tevos replied, her face not betraying the sheer terror she felt. "we can't just allow your forces unrestricted access into our territory."

"Councilors," Nihlus spoke up. "What if they had a Spectre as an escort while they search within our borders?" The councilors and the ambassador looked over at him. "Think about it. Whoever is embedded in the search team will monitor the search and take care of any legal issues that may pop up. The Alliance gets to search, and we keep them from doing any underhanded things in our territory."

"That is an elegant solution," Valern said.

"I believe that would satisfy my superiors," Udina added.

"How many teams would you have searching our territory?" Tevos asked.

Udina thought for a moment before answering. "I believe that should be limited to the Normandy. One ship. I presume that, in the interest of cooperation, you would have some of your forces aid in the search?"

"Within reason of course," Valern replied. "Our forces do have other duties to attend to."

"Then I think we have an agreement. I will clear it with my superiors."

"There's just one problem," Anderson called out, and everyone turned to look at him. "Where do we start?"

"I believe you may wish to start with another of our Spectres," Sparatus answered, tentatively. "Spectre Garrus Vakarian."

"Why is that?"

"He has been quite vocal about distrusting Saren ever since he joined, and would possibly have kept tabs on his activities."

Shepard shrugged. "That's as good a place to start as any. Where do we find him?"

An uncomfortable silence settled in. "We don't know," Sparatus finally answered. "He does not check in regularly. Perhaps his father would be able to locate him. Tallus Vakarian, in C-Sec Headquarters."

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "So let me get this straight. You have, as part of your law enforcement structure, agents who can do whatever they want, go wherever they want, buy weapons that other people in your civilization can only dream of, kill pretty much whoever they want, _and you don't keep track of them?_ "

"Perhaps we should reconsider that policy," Tevos agreed weakly.

"Yeah, that may be a good idea," Shepard retorted as she turned and walked out.

 _Codex: Crime and Punishment within the Alliance_

 _In the aftermath of the Ethereal War, society took the opportunity to reform itself. While much of Earth united under the banner of the Alliance, many nations still retained their individual laws. In 2032, the Alliance decided to craft a single unified legal code that was finished and signed by all nations in 2053, just in time for the start of Interstellar Colonization._

 _The Alliance distinguishes criminals into three categories: Initial Offenders, Serial Offenders, and Capital Offenders._

 _Initial offenders are those who have only committed one or two offenses for low-impact crimes. Such crimes exclude rape, murder, grand larceny, and substance-derived incidents. Initial offenders are assigned to minimum security facilities where the security personnel double as teacher and instructors. Offenders may learn valuable trades and skills and obtain education up to the first semester of college. Upon release, the offense is expunged from the public record and potential employers may not discriminate against them if there are only Initial offenses._

 _Serial offenders are split into two subcategories: Misdemeanor offenders and Felony offenders. Misdemeanor offenders are placed in higher security facilities and receive stricter rehabilitation and evaluation. Felony offenders are housed in maximum security prisons focused on containment. Serial offenders are evaluated to determine if they can still be rehabilitated, or if it is worth the time and effort. Those who are determined to be reclaimable are carefully observed upon release. Two rape or two murder charges is grounds for execution under Alliance law. Or worse._

 _Capital offenders are those who are guilty of the worst crimes. Slavery of any form, premeditated murder, child rape and treason resulting in loss of life are among the list of Capital Crimes. For these offenders, the Alliance has established isolated prison planets, monitored by small security detachments. Prisoners have a choice of either life in work camps overseen by military police, or death in the wilderness._

 _The Alliance's legal code is, like many other aspects of the Alliance, derived from pure pragmatism. By rehabilitating initial offenders, the vast majority of criminals, rather than imprisoning them, the Alliance can relieve the financial and personnel burdens on the prison system and free up individuals for other jobs that may be required of them. Serial offenders who the system has determined cannot be redeemed are typically executed. Some advocates have protested the system, arguing that the Alliance cares more about convenience to the government rather than justice for the accused, a charge that has never been denied. In any case, there are strict criteria in place to determine whether redemption is worth the investment of time and money, and a non-redemption order must be signed by five certified and non-biased mental health experts._

 _Codex: Predator Corps_

 _Every member of the Predator Corps is a graduate of the Advanced Infantry Training Center. On average, around one-in-twenty is an individual with psionic ability or potential. These individuals are usually assigned to be squad commanders and are trained to utilize their abilities to strike fear into the opposition, making them feel as though they are being hunted._

 _A newly graduated member starts with the Corps Rank of P1. These individuals go on into specialty training schools to earn their next rank._

 _A graduate of a specialty school earns the rank of P3. They are the most common rank within the Predator Corps._

 _A squad or team commander usually has the rank of P5. These are the individuals who can be called to go on solo or two-man operations. They have cross trained into at least three specialties._

 _The prize rank of P7 belongs to the rare Predator Corps member who has graduated from every specialty school and distinguished themselves in the field. Notable individuals are Commander Erin Shepard, Captain David Anderson and Master Combat Instructor Zaeed Massani, who is nearing the end of his five year tour at the AITC._

 **The next chapter involves finding Garrus and Wrex. I'll be writing in a bit more humor than in previous chapters.**

 **And notice how the Citadel forces are also looking for any intelligence they can gather, like how good Shepard's eyesight is, or what it takes to restrain her. There are so many little things about yourself that you may think don't matter, but can severely compromise things if you aren't careful. OpSec is a bitch to deal with.**

 **Like I said, General Summers and Ambassador Udina playing bad cop/good cop.**

 **Has anyone else ever considered how idiotic the Canon Council's regulations (or lack thereof) involving the Spectres are?  
**

 **Review!**


	9. Ask questions (violently), get answers

**Another chapter. Harkin doesn't exist in the story simply because in canon, the Alliance protected him. Here he failed C-Sec Screening and mouthed off to the wrong person in the slums. Enjoy!**

Chapter Eight

 **Tartarus**

Dr. Core entered the office without knocking, as was her custom. "Jack, I have Agent Rasa's communique, and Eden Primes lab results."

The director accepted the files, and began perusing them. "If I recall, eyewitnesses claimed that a beam weapon was used to destroy the Militia frigates. This report says otherwise."

"Analysis indicates that it is close, but not quite. The weapon is a hydrodynamic ferrofluid cannon. Using powerful magnetic armatures, the cannon accelerates a stream of superheated ferrous compound to roughly point zero two c. Not nearly as long ranged as our weapons, but considering the energy signature and how that the dreadnought was based on Element Zero, it's quite impressive and effective."

"By your explanation, it appears comparable to our plasma projectors."

"The damage mechanism is similar, though with considerably more of it due to kinetic force. Preliminary simulations estimate the fluid temperature to be nearly three thousand degree Celsius. It becomes much hotter upon impact due to kinetic energy conversion and the amount of molecular collisions.

"Hmm," Harper tapped his chin. "Any information on the hull composition of the dreadnought? Captain Anderson's contact report indicated he managed to score some damage using his retrofitted laser weaponry and some kind of extra-regulatory magnetic focusing effect."

"The engineer we debriefed via QEC explained to us that he ran the magnetic armatures as hot as he dared, putting more current through the line and focusing the laser cannon as tight as possible. According to his figures, a sustained shot on one location could burn clean through one of our Militia cruisers from front to back, though the beam spread and damage would be very narrow. As for the enemy's hull composition, it appears to be some unknown organic derivative."

"Organic?"

"Correct. I know what you're thinking. The answer is we don't know what kind of organic process could create a material tough enough to serve as armor for any military spacecraft, never mind armor that could withstand standard laser cannon fire."

"Was the material alive?"

"Difficult to say, given the limited data we are working with. My analysis of the hull is based off of in-combat video footage, deriving the original color of the molecular luminescence as the Normandy's lasers burned a streak in the hull. To get more information, I'll need material samples of the hull."

"I see," the director said as he set down the paper. "And Agent Rasa has determined a connection between Nashan Stellar Dynamics and Saren?"

"It wasn't direct. That news report was leaked by an unknown third party. It wouldn't have made a lot of sense for Nashan to jump on an incident like this so soon. But I thought you might be onto something there, so I sent J-03 to obtain information."

 **Unknown location**

 _He woke up groggily, his eyes slow to focus on his surroundings. He shook his head, wondering what was going on as he pushed himself off the floor._

 _"Finally awake" a woman's voice echoed as if from a distance "Now we can get started."_

 _"Get star-" An impossibly strong compulsion forced his jaw shut. He tried to speak, but he found that his mouth wouldn't obey. -What in the hell?!-_

 _"I didn't give you permission to talk, naughty boy," the voice scolded lightly, though something about it felt impossibly cold and dangerous. He looked up and laid his eyes on an unnaturally beautiful black-haired woman in a white and black catsuit, an unidentifiable gun holstered against her thigh._

 _-Who is this woman?- he thought. -What does she want from me?-_

 _As if in answer, the corners of her mouth curled upward in a terrifying smirk. "I'm your interrogator, boy, and you are going to tell me everything about your little deal with Saren Arterius."_

 _-Interrogator?! What is going on?!-_

 _"Don't play dumb, boy. You are guilty of aiding an enemy of the Alliance in an attack on a colony. That counts as treason, and you know what we do to traitors, don't you?"_

 _-She must mean the deal with the turian-_

 _"Yes," she said as she moved closer towards him. "your deal with the turian. He came to you didn't he? He wanted your help smuggling something onto a ship to Eden Prime, right? And he offered you something, a future business contract, wasn't it?"_

 _-How the hell does this woman know about that?-_

 _"You're rather slow on the uptake, aren't you boy? I'm reading your mind you imbecile." She sniffed dismissively as she took another step forward, forcing the panicked man back towards the corner of the room. "Men, so sure of themselves, so stupidly transparent when they get caught."_

 _-Reading my mind? That's impossible!-_

 _"One of the things you should know you naughty little boy," the frightening woman replied as she closed the distance. "is that anything is possible if you put your mind to it." And with that last step, her dark eyes began shining a deadly bright purple hue._

 _-I'll talk! I'll tell you everything!-_

 _"Oh yes," she whispered as she grabbed the man's shoulders with impossibly strong hands. "You'll tell me everything whether you want to or not. And then I will break your mind so completely you will never harm the Alliance again."_

 _-Please, no! Don't hurt me! I'll tell you for free!-_

 _"You hurt plenty of others when you sold out your race for an extra profit. Everything has its cost, you naughty boy. Now I'm going to collect."_

 _Shadows began creeping around his field of vision. Deathly whispers echoed in his ears. The scent of blood, sweat, and fear rankled his nose. He screamed in his mind, and tried to turn away from the horrible creature pinning him to the wall. But nothing could free him from that deadly purple gaze…_

 **Tartarus**

"The CEO of Nashan Stellar Dynamics was one of those who regularly protests our, quote 'draconian travel restrictions.' It seems that he put the geth shipment onto our transports and bribed an official to clear it to Eden Prime. He suspected that Saren was up to no good, and planned to use whatever incident developed to discredit the Alliance Travel Service. His larger plan was to ultimately privatize interplanetary travel and line his pockets with money from the citizens. Also, Saren promised him a business contract in the future. Agent Rasa is going through the company correspondences, but I highly doubt that the contract will ever arrive. I suspect that Saren betrayed the man by having someone else leak a fabricated claim from his company."

"If nothing else, it demonstrates his racial hatred against us," Harper commented. "Did Rasa discover how Saren learned of the find in the first place?"

"Dr. Sterns attempted to contact a Citadel institute in order to obtain funding for an excavation and professional expertise in assessing the Prothean find. The institute in question typically serves more as a liaison point of contact, and they most likely would have forwarded the message to another organization. But the message was intercepted by someone on the Citadel. Most likely someone on Saren's payroll."

"Can we identify who it is?"

"Unfortunately, no. All we have is the equivalent of an IP address. Someone was monitoring the Extranet node and captured the data packet. We are currently attempting to determine the location on the Citadel where the person who made the intercept was."

"Once you have a location, forward it to Captain Anderson."

"Got it."

 **Citadel, C-Sec Headquarters**

The human officer at the entrance desk looked up from his terminal at his visitors, surprised to note the three Alliance soldiers in full armor behind the turian leading the group. "May I help you?"

"This is Spectre Kryik here to see Executor Pallin."

Shepard noted a flicker of distaste across the man's face at the mention of the word 'Spectre' before the man pressed a button on the terminal and repeated the message. A sharp unintelligible squawk answered, and the man looked back up. "Head on up sir. He's kind of in a bad mood though."

"When isn't he in a bad mood?" Kryik asked rhetorically as he moved past the desk.

"You know this Executor Pallin?" Shepard asked once the elevator doors closed.

"I liaised with C-Sec back when I first became a Spectre to learn how to do a criminal investigation," the turian answered. "Also doesn't hurt to have good relations with the police. Never know when I might need serious backup."

"That guy at the desk doesn't seem to like Spectres."

"Most of C-Sec doesn't," Nihlus admitted. "It's because we tend to go against regulations and ruin investigations that we come across. That means files stay opened and extra paperwork needs to be filed and cases can get stalled. I try to avoid doing that. They also really don't like the lack of regulation over us."

The doors opened and the three soldiers followed the Spectre across the floor, drawing looks from the officers and workers as they went to a large office and entered.

"I can't say it's a pleasure to see you again," the turian behind the desk rumbled as he rose to greet them. "but I at least have high hopes that you won't disrupt any cases or investigations we have going on."

"Nice to see you too," Kryik replied. "We actually came here to talk to Tallus. The Alliance would like to meet his son."

"Joy," the executor commented dryly. "one of the most violent and disruptive races in the galaxy wants to see the most violent and disruptive Spectre in the galaxy. I shudder to think what will come of this," he pressed a button on his desk. "Vakarian? My office, now."

 _"Coming sir."_

"In our defense sir," Kaidan spoke up. "other people were violent and disruptive toward us first."

"I've heard the words 'but he started it' more times than I can count. I'm afraid I've stopped caring who started it. All that legally matters is that both parties got involved."

A new turian entered the office, eyed the three Alliance emblems, and his shoulders drooped. "Spirits above, please tell me that Garrus didn't manage to cause an incident with the humans."

"Wrong turian," Shepard answered. "Saren Arterius did, and we hear that your son might have been keeping tabs on him."

"Do you know where he is, sir?" Kryik inquired.

"He's my son and he causes C-Sec no end of grief in his attempts to go after criminals," Tallus replied. "I worry every day that he might get in over his head. I try my best to keep track of him, but he dislikes my interference in his life."

"So you can't find him?" Alenko interrupted.

"He stopped answering my calls almost a week ago. I have friends looking out for him, but Garrus knows how to keep out of sight when he wants to. The last I heard, he mentioned something about a quarian that Saren was apparently interested in."

"A quarian?" Shepard cut in. "One of those people who are trapped in environmental suits their whole lives?"

"Yes. Garrus didn't say anything else to me, but his last transmission cut out around the Medical Center in the Wards."

"Looks like we're heading there next then," Kaidan noted.

"You'll have to go without me," Shepard said, indicating her comm. "I think the captain has something else for me."

"While you're here on the Citadel," Pallin commented. "please restrain your vengeful impulses. I'd rather not have to deal with a diplomatic incident involving the Alliance."

"Hate to tell you this, but you already are," Kryik answered as the group walked out.

"Joy," the executor repeated as the door closed behind them.

 **Citadel, The Wards**

Kryik sighed as he neared the medical center and motioned to Williams and Kaidan to hold up. "You brought weapons, right?"

"Only my sidearm," the lieutenant answered. Williams replied instead by hefting her laser rifle.

"Hope you're good with that pistol," the turian eyed the weapon dubiously.

Across the way, they could hear a distinctly human voice. "Get your hands off me!"

"Shut up, lady. You're gonna pay for sending that maniac to our boss!"

"Hey, I wonder how she looks under that lab coat."

"Really? Is that all you think about? Dicking around with women? Fist said to kill her."

"So we do that later. We can still have a bit of fun with her. What d'ya say to that, doc? Show you a good time, sweet cheeks. You can even play nurse for me."

"Forget the nurse, you'll need a hearse," Kryik called out as he put a round into the thug's kneecap from fifty meters away.

"Gah!"

Ashley's rifle screeched as a beam of crimson incinerated the other thug's arm. Kaiden got off two shots at a third criminal who was a block away from the first two and burned a hole in the weapon of a fourth's hand.

"Ow!" The man dropped his gun, shaking his hand from the heat, and Nihlus blew his one of his legs off.

"Oh god, please don't shoot me!" the woman in the middle of the area cried as she huddled on the ground, covering her head.

Satisfied that the criminals were no longer a threat, Kaidan ran over to her and checked her over before helping her to her feet. "They won't be a problem anymore, ma'am."

The two with disabled legs groaned in pain as the turian moved to stand over the would-be rapist. "I heard you mention someone named Fist. Care to tell me who he is?"

"Go fuck yourself, turiaaagh!" he screamed as Nihlus fired into his other leg.

"Yes, let's irritate the man with the gun who's standing right next to you. I'm not repeating myself."

"I'm not telling y-argh!" the man howled as the turian put all his weight on his wounded legs. "Chora's Den! Chora's Den!"

"Appreciate it," the Spectre replied before executing him. He turned to Kaidan just in time to see the man slam the butt of his laser pistol into the criminal's right shoulder hard enough to snap several bones.

"Is that how you talk to a lady?" he demanded.

"N-no s-sir…" the scum replied through gritted teeth.

"Then why did you do it?" and he promptly broke the other shoulder sending the man into unconscious shock. The woman next to him looked somewhat mortified at the violence occurring in front of her building.

"You have a disarming way with the ladies," the Spectre noted as Williams approached from her cover.

"My mother taught me to be polite," The lieutenant answered.

"Good woman," Kryik turned to the doctor. "Hope I didn't catch you at a bad time, ma'am. We're looking for a turian who may have been around here asking questions."

"Y-yes, there was one here. He was looking for a quarian that I helped out. I told him I sent her to Fist since he knows the Shadow Broker and could get her information to someone."

"The Shadow Broker?" Williams asked.

"He's an information broker," the Spectre replied. "a free agent in the galaxy. Sells information to the highest bidder." Then he turned to the doctor. "And how did you know about this Fist, Miss…"

"Doctor Chloe Michel. This is the Ward, and you won't believe what my patients sometimes talk about under anesthesia."

 _Possibly an Alliance Intelligence Source,_ Kryik thought. _That's a clever way to gather information. Patients talk a lot._ "Was that all the turian wanted to know?"

"Yes. He left right after that."

"Thank you, ma'am. Do you need any help around here? I could give C-Sec a call for you."

"As much as I would like that, my patients are suspicious of law enforcement."

"Alright. Well thank you again." She nodded, and ran inside her clinic. Nihlus turned to the other two. "Chora's Den. That's what the first guy said."

"Know the place?" Kaiden asked.

"Nope," the turian answered as he executed the last criminal. "but I guess there's been a commotion if these guys went after the doctor for sending Garrus over there."

"Then we should move."

 **Citadel, Chora's Den**

Shepard finished tying the restraints on the two unconscious attackers before throwing them into an alley. She'd be back for the scum once she finished with the new lead from X-CON.

From the looks of things, the place was locked. That was easily solved. Shepard simply walked up to the front door and ran a hacking program that Cerberus had developed for Citadel computer technology. The door disengaged and retracted, allowing the commando inside.

The place was a mess. There were bodies strewn on the floor of the bar, each with a single headshot, and plenty of broken glass. Shepard's trained eye reconstructed the scene and she noted a path of crushed glass and blood towards another door. She went through it to discover it was surprisingly clean with the exception of a blood trail. The trail led to an office with a computer terminal that was still on. She ran the program again and went through the information in the computer. Fist apparently had an apartment close by. She eyed the room again before leaving. The place had been ransacked. The man was probably going to make a run for it after Spectre Vakarian came tearing through.

She ran out of the bar and over to the address, glad that the criminal bar owner had been so sloppy in covering his tracks. Near the apartment, she saw a truck being loaded with items and a bruised and anxious looking man who matched the personal images on the bar's office terminal.

"Going somewhere, Fist?"

To his credit, the man took off running rather that freeze like a rookie. Shepard laughed as she easily caught up to him and threw him into an alleyway.

"Points for effort, pal, but you're not getting out of this one."

"If you're going to kill me, just do it!" he snarled defiantly.

"Oh I'd love to kill you," Shepard sneered as she put her face in his. "But I can't since I'm an official guest here, so I'll settle for beating the information out of you that I want. I hear that a Spectre paid your bar a visit. I want to know what you told him about the quarian he's after."

"What? You don't know? You're not with the Broker?"

"You see this patch, dumbass?" Shepard indicated the pentagon on her armored bicep. "I'm Alliance. You know, the people that your new boss Saren pissed off."

Fist paled. "Saren did that?"

"Oh yeah. And you helped him do it. You took some information from the Shadow Broker to give to Saren and make some more money, didn't you? That information led him to attack Eden Prime. That's treason, and you should know what that earns you."

"I didn't know what he would do with it! All I knew was that Saren was going to pay big money for any information on Prothean Artifacts! I swear I wouldn't have passed it along!"

"That's nice. I'll be sure to tell the soldiers who died in the attack how you never meant for it to happen. Now _tell me what you told the Spectre!_ "

"The quarian is being held at a warehouse! I have the coordinates!"

Shepard took them and viciously kicked the man in the knee. "That's for your treason. Let's see how you'll get away from pissing off the Broker with a bad leg."

As the commando ran off, tears streamed off his face in agony. The man slowly hobbled out of the alleyway and bumped into someone. He looked up at the person and his face turned white.

"Looks like this job just got real good," the krogan in front of him said with a smile as he hefted a shotgun. "I found someone I'm looking for, and I found who the Broker is looking for. You did me a real favor, Fist. Been wanting to meet the Butcher of Torfan face to face."

"W-would that favor be enough for you to let me go?"

"Almost. There's just one problem with that," and the krogan raised his shotgun muzzle. "I hate leaving unfinished contracts."

 **Citadel, Warehouse 223**

 _"Commander, we got a lead. Vakarian went to a place called Chora's Den-"_

"Already went there, Kaidan. Anderson got a lead from home. I chatted with Fist. He said the quarian's being held in a warehouse at these coordinates." She rattled them off. "From the sound of things, this might get real ugly. I'll meet you guys here."

 _"Copy that, on the way."_

Shepard peered out of the alleyway, eying the building to see if she could spot the Spectre. Nihlus had told her about Garrus's trademark blue armor and his penchant for using a sniper rifle. But she couldn't see anyone in the visible high-points. She scanned the area around. It was nearly deserted. No sign of a blue turian with a long gun magnetized to his back.

She heard a sound behind her, and she whirled around, sidearm in hand.

"Who's there?"

A shape she recognized as a krogan stepped out of the shadows. "You got good ears, Butcher."

"Who are you?"

"Name's Wrex," the krogan answered, holding up his hands in a peaceful gesture. "I wanted to say two things to you."

"And what would that be?"

"Well first, thanks for making it easy to find that loser, Fist. The Broker had me hunting him down."

"Hope you made the bastard suffer," Shepard commented. "What's the second thing?"

"Mind if I join you? The way I've heard things, you Alliance types could use a hand hunting down that Arterius brat. Sounds like fun."

"You're serious?"

"Never liked that turian anyway," Wrex shrugged. "and I'd like to stay on the Alliance's good side. Keeps my crest attached to my head longer that way."

Shepard raised an eyebrow, sensing another reason, but lowered her pistol. "I'm not averse to an extra hand. Just don't fuck with me, and we'll be good."

"Oh believe me, that's the last thing I want to do."

"I thought all krogan loved to fight."

"I love a good brawl as much as the next krogan, but I know better than to pick a fight with an Alliance supersoldier who can probably kill me with her bare hands. You don't get to be an old krogan by being stupid and hot blooded."

"Fair enough." Shepard turned back to the warehouse. "Know anything about this place?"

"Only that it's probably not going to be standing much longer if you're looking to go barging in there."

"Some help," Shepard muttered before answering her comm.

 _"We're here, ma'am."_

"On the way."

As the two approached, Nihlus noted the krogan trailing the Commander. "I see you found a friend," he said.

"Something about paying me back for helping find Fist. The quarian is somewhere inside. Vakarian might be as well."

"Only one way to find out."

"Ma'am," Kaidan interrupted. "Maybe we should enter via the roof. We'll cover you from above."

"Good idea. Nihlus, can you get a layout of the warehouse?"

"Blueprints were deleted, probably by Saren. You're going in blind."

The krogan behind Shepard laughed. "That makes it fun."

Shepard simply cracked her knuckles. "Works for me."

 _Codex: Quality of Life within the Alliance_

 _In comparison to life for civilians under Citadel Law, the Alliance can be quite oppressive._

 _Interplanetary travel is heavily restricted and monitored. Those with a criminal record may not board a transport._

 _The Alliance does not permit immigrants to receive citizenship. Only their children may receive it and move off of Shanxi further into Alliance Territory._

 _The policy of equipping the colonial Militia with inferior weapons to the actual military is partly to deny a potential enemy information on Alliance technology, but also to ensure that an attempt at rebellion would fail._

 _Security checks occur everywhere. Children are checked even at school to verify that they are where they should be. All companies perform checks on their employees as required by law to reduce crime or mismanagement._

 _To offset these policies, the Alliance has engaged in public awareness training to inform the people of the necessity (as they see it) behind these actions. Critics decry the violations of personal liberties, but most citizens are apathetic, seeing them as necessary to ensure their safety as a race, exactly as intended by the Alliance government._

 _Codex: Alliance relations with the Krogan_

 _Due to apprehension regarding interference with the STG, the Alliance has remained out of the affairs of the Krogan Race. This has not stopped several libertarian think tanks from calling for an end to the Council's use of the Genophage. Cerberus is currently conducting preliminary studies on the Genophage to see how to go about reversing it should it become advantageous to do so._

 _For their part, the STG has recognized what a threat the Alliance is to the ongoing Genophage deployment through project Firebreak. As a result, a larger than normal turian fleet presence exists near the Krogan DMZ to curtail possible Alliance interference._

 _The Krogan themselves look on the Alliance as a powerful race, but a cowardly one for not choosing to exert their power over the Citadel Races. The Alliance has seen no reason to disabuse them of this notion._

 **I know that Garrus's father was never named in canon, and had been retired by the time Garrus himself went in. In this universe, he didn't pull strings to block Garrus from becoming a Spectre. Pallin keeps him on in an attempt to try and reign Garrus's more destructive tendencies in.**

 **Can anyone guess who interrogated the CEO?**

 **And everyone say hi to Wrex! As he says, he knows better than to get on the Alliance's bad side. He'll fully explain himself later on.**

 **Now here's the deal. If you guys can break 100 reviews, I'll put in a spoiler for the story next chapter. Need 21 to do that. Review!**


	10. Sniped

**The gang from ME1 is ALMOST all together. Once again, can you guys find the shout-outs?**

 **Kudos to Eye of Sauron and a guest reviewer for finding the last two.**

 **Too bad there weren't enough reviews to earn a small spoiler. Maybe next time, eh?**

Chapter Nine

 **Citadel, Warehouse 223**

Spectre Garrus Vakarian knelt against the box he was hiding behind, carefully peering out at the morons he'd have to waste. Two days ago, he'd been afraid that they would kill the girl, but the quarian had apparently copied and hidden the file somewhere else before telling them about it. He had to admit, that took guts. They were apparently reluctant to do anything to her for fear of accidentally killing her before finding the information, so she was simply locked off in a room with guards interrogating her.

Just yesterday, a new group came in to reinforce the troop here, doubling the number of idiots he'd have to go through. And right as he'd been about to start his attack, too. Ah well, he had as long as that quarian girl could hold up to interrogation to rescue her, and he was pretty much just waiting for an opportunity. The explosive he'd carefully planted in the hallway while the guards had been distracted would bury the quarian's room with wreckage, preventing anyone from getting in there while he used his customized baby to eliminate the scum.

He lovingly ran a taloned hand over his rifle. Heavier than most, he'd called in a favor from someone who knew a technician in the STG to figure out a way to make a laser sniper rifle for him, and this wonder was the result. A high-density Element Zero reactor in the buttstock and a thermovoltaic recycling system allowed him to fire a laser beam capable of piercing heavy body armor at six hundred meters without instantly draining the weapon. And this was in addition to the standard fire capabilities of a mass-effect weapon. The laser was just something special in case he ever needed it. Pity it gave his position away when he used it, but no kinetic barrier would be blocking this.

He rose up a little, perching the rifle on the box and bracing it against his shoulder. The laser first, to penetrate into the room and kill the lone guard in there. He'd simultaneously detonate the explosive, blocking the room off until further notice, and then there'd be nowhere to run for the guards. A combination scan from his customized visor revealed a layered sonar and thermal image. Two in the room with the prisoner, and one was about to leave. Perfect. Just shut the door, and take a few steps down the hall…

The two doors whose locking mechanisms he'd fried on either side of the warehouse abruptly ceased to be obstacles. One on the left crumpled around the figure that charged in with a roar. The other flew inward, tearing out of its frame and decapitating an unlucky criminal below. His comrade barely had time to gape before jerking from the impact of a laser incinerating his chest cavity. Garrus's finger slipped a little and a stream of concentrated red erupted, drilling through two walls of steel and vaporizing the hapless lone guard's head. He brought his head up and quickly scanned the new figures, who were making short work of the frantic hostage takers on either side of the warehouse.

The krogan, his eyepiece recognized as Urdnot Wrex. A long-lived mercenary, one of the last battlemasters from before the Rachni War, and a frequent contractor for the Shadow Broker. Not good. Probably here to secure the quarian for the shady intelligence master, in which case yet another lead on Saren Arterius would slip away.

The other figure, damn near everyone on the Citadel could probably recognize, though not by name. Commander Erin Shepard, the Butcher of Torfan. Why the woman was here escaped him, but knowing about the Alliance's standard response to threats and attacks, she was probably after the quarian as well.

He was about to sight his rifle on the krogan to neutralize him when the roof exploded, obscuring his sightline. _Spirits, who_ else _came to this party? I thought I was the only one who commits excessive property damage!_ As if in answer, two Alliance soldiers and a fellow turian Spectre that he recognized jumped down onto the upper catwalks and raced forward, relentlessly pummeling the criminals with fire. _Well,_ he thought wryly as the combination of newcomers eliminated all the intruders, _no need to call in backup from C-Sec for this._

"Clear!" Nihlus called.

"Clear!" Shepard replied.

 _Well that's that,_ Garrus thought. _I feel kind of cheated, but this is one lead that isn't getting away from me._ "Didn't expect to see you here, Kryik," he yelled as he climbed off the hill of crates he'd ensconced himself on for a sniper perch.

"I'm just glad we caught up," his fellow turian answered while rappelling down to meet him.

Vakarian was about to greet the red-haired Alliance woman when he noticed a shape coming out of the dust cloud from the other side of the warehouse. Drawing his pistol, he ran three steps, only slowing down when he heard Nihlus hollering at him. "Wait, Garrus, the krogan is with us!"

 _Say what?_ Garrus thought as he pressed a pistol against the side of the krogan mercenary's head crest.

"Come on now," the other Spectre cautioned. "settle down. We have enough issues right now without you two trying to kill each other."

The krogan laughed and carefully slid Vakarian's pistol away. "Were it so easy, pup," he said before ambling over to join the Alliance officer.

"Okay, mind explaining something, Nihlus?"

"Ah, introductions. Commander Shepard, Lieutenant Commander Alenko, Chief Williams, meet Garrus Vakarian, or as us other Spectres call him, 'Sparatus's biggest headache.'"

"A pleasure," Shepard commented while extending a hand in greeting with a smirk. As soon as Garrus took it, he regretted it as she bore down on his hand with astonishing force. "Your reputation for collateral damage precedes you."

"Pleasure's all mine," he whimpered stoically before shaking out his hand to see if it was still structurally okay. Even with his own augmentations, that woman had a powerful grip. "Ow…"

"Yeah, she does that," Kryik noted with slight amusement, and a phantom pain of sympathy from his own limb.

"You could have told me that beforehand."

"You didn't give me a chance."

"Where's the quarian?" Alenko asked.

"I was just about to get her."

Garrus led the way to the room and then was forced to step back as a few shots flew past the door.

"S-stay back!" the girl demanded as she shakily leveled the dead guard's rifle. "Get away from me or…or I'll shoot!"

"Hey, cool it miss, I came here to save you."

"Who are you?!"

"I'm a Spectre. So do you mind putting the gun down?"

"Prove it!"

Garrus growled and pulled out his ID card before slowly extending it with one hand into the doorway. Mercifully, the quarian didn't shoot. "I'm coming in, ma'am. No weapons. Just letting you know." And he carefully stepped inside with both hands clearly up and facing her.

"Why would a Council Spectre try and rescue me?" the quarian asked as she closed just enough to confirm the identity on the card.

"I heard you have something on Saren Arterius. Some incriminating information."

"Incriminating?" Shepard asked as she entered the room as well, completely unconcerned about the rifle the nervous quarian girl was pointing at her. "We have all the 'incriminating evidence' we need to go after Saren. I thought this would be a lead. "

"Uh, what are you talking about, Commander?"

"Been out of the loop there, Garrus," Nihlus answered. "Saren attacked an Alliance colony with a dreadnought no one's ever seen before."

Everyone present was stunned by Garrus's reaction. "I knew it! I knew that Saren was going to do something! I even told Sparatus about it!"

"Wait, the turian councilor knew ahead of time?" Alenko wondered incredulously.

"That bastard-!" Williams hissed, the first words she'd uttered all day.

"What is going on?! What are you bosh-tet's talking about?!" the quarian yelled in hysterical frustration as the stress of the situation and the bewildering conversation got to her.

"Long story," Shepard replied. "Maybe we should talk this whole thing out back at the embassy."

 **Citadel, Alliance Embassy**

"…so long story short, I kept bothering Sparatus about Saren until he told me to not come back until I actually had hard evidence."

"I imagine this would explain why Sparatus first named you as a possible lead on the rogue Spectre," Udina commented.

"Yeah," Garrus muttered. "That prick probably felt stupid for ignoring me in the first place."

"Well before you go back to him with a well-deserved 'I told you so,' we still need to see what information the quarian has on Saren."

"I have a name, you know!" the quarian said indignantly. "I am Tali'Zorah nar Rayya."

"My apologies," Udina said. "Would you please share it with us, Tali'Zorah?"

"It's a recorded file I extracted from a geth memory core," Tali explained as she activated her omnitool. "Two people were talking about planning an attack on the Alliance. I…" she paused, realizing the delicacy of her position considering that she was in the presence of two Council Spectres. "…I thought that I could warn the Alliance and maybe get some help for my people." she finished meekly.

Nihlus eyed her with a neutral expression. "And you didn't think about the Council resolution forbidding aid to the fleet?"

"Any Council resolution concerning punishing of the Quarian people is non-applicable to the Alliance," Udina cut in before Tali could explode with indignant rage. "Should we decide to aid them in return for this attempt at helping us, we could do as se see fit. I should think that the first unhappy incident between our civilizations made it clear that we are not constrained to the Council's laws."

"Hey, I'm not going off on her," The Spectre said, raising his hands in surrender. "I'd have done the same thing in her place if my people were trapped in a giant refugee fleet. I'm just saying that the Council wouldn't be happy with them."

"Can we look at the record, gentlemen?" Shepard asked, refocusing the discussion.

"Sorry about that. Play it."

The room darkened and an image sprang to life. It was grainy, but two shadowy figures could be made out.

 _"…finally have something. I don't care if it's on Alliance territory. This beacon probably has some of the information we need. And I know just how to get to it."_

 _"But how will we get to the planet? There is no information about this 'Eden Prime.'"_

 _"Let me worry about that. Soon these humans will know the might of the Reapers."_

"Not very much to go on," Alenko noted as the video winked out. "There isn't any more?"

"This was all I could save," Tali apologized. "I was lucky to even pull this out before the geth core fried itself."

Garrus eyed Tali appreciatively. "I heard that the best STG engineers couldn't get anything from a dead geth platform."

"There are advantages to us being the ones who made them," the girl replied with a hint of smugness.

"Ambassador, wouldn't it be a good idea to collaborate with the quarians?" Shepard asked. "We know that Saren somehow got the geth to follow him. We could use the anti-geth expertise they have."

"Not a bad idea, Shepard," Anderson called as he exited the Embassy Communications room. "I think we'll boot that one upstairs though. Interspecies relations are beyond our pay grade."

"I presume the transfer has been finalized?" Udina queried.

"Yes sir, pending the Council's approval."

"You know," Kryik said as he stared vacantly at the wall the video had played on. "there's something about that second voice. I can't place it, but I know I've heard that person before."

"Now that you mention it, I've heard it too," Garrus added. "It sounded Asari. Can't put a name to it though."

"Think Councilor Tevos might know who it is?" Shepard wondered.

"We might as well ask," Udina answered. "Shall we?"

 **Adogene**

Kai Leng allowed a smirk to cross his face as he carefully trailed the disgusting four-eyed freak he was assigned to deal with. He so enjoyed extermination missions. It was all the more fun to see the look on alien faces when it was apparent that their so-called "secret plans" weren't so secret after all.

Ka'hairal Balak. Originally of the Special Interventions Unit, formerly of the External Forces Unit prior to the Hegemony's collapse. Cerberus had "turned" a would-be Batarian infiltrator on Shanxi, with some psionic intimidation, and learned of Balak's cell of Hegemony remnants. Leng was here to put a stop to Balak's plan to smash an asteroid mine into the colony of Terra Nova.

Balak was on this rotten planet presumably to finalize the plan and gather his dedicated forces. Said forces were mainly comprised of disillusioned former Hegemony soldiers seeking revenge for the Alliance's "underhanded atrocity" against Kharshan. All Leng was waiting for was the opportunity to isolate Balak and his men and then artfully dispose of them. He fingered the handle of his monomolecular blade lovingly. Soon, the slaughter would start. Just as soon as this short-sighted fucker boarded his ship, loaded his crew, and took off. After that? Well, there is an old saying: in space, no one can hear you scream.

 **Citadel, Council Chambers**

"N-no way…" Tevos breathed in shock. "That was Matriarch Benezia! SHE'S in league with Saren?!"

"So it would appear," Valern commented. "Might I ask how you came by this record, miss…"

"Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, sir. I could give you the details, but I doubt you would understand them."

"Ahem," Udina coughed, drawing attention to himself. "Who exactly is Matriarch Benezia?"

"One of the most respected asari philosophers and teachers," Sparatus answered. "She commands near-universal respect through our civilization, and she's a champion of interracial peace and self-determination."

"But why would she go with Saren?" Tevos wondered. "Saren is almost her polar opposite! She is a philosopher who welcomes all races, and he was a militaristic executor of our laws."

"Perhaps her daughter could tell us more," Valern opined.

"Her daughter?" Shepard asked.

"Dr. Liara T'Soni. She is a Prothean archaeologist from the University of Thessia, and Benezia's only daughter. Although I believe they have been somewhat estranged from each other in recent years."

"Sounds like a very thin lead," Anderson thought aloud.

"It's better than nothing," Garrus muttered. "Damn sure it's more than what I had on Saren for the last five years."

"Where can we find Liara?"

"She is currently on the planet Therum, Commander," Tevos answered. "She is cataloging the Prothean ruins recently discovered there."

"No time to waste then," Shepard said. "Saren sent people after Tali to keep us from getting this information. It's more than likely he's going to send his geth after Benezia's daughter just to cut off loose ends."

"Benezia would never allow that!" Tevos exclaimed.

"Only if she knew about it," Valern cautioned.

"Spectre Vakarian," Sparatus's voice echoed suddenly. "In light of recent events, the Alliance requires a Spectre to oversee their pursuit of the rogue Saren Arterius. Would you consent to being embedded with their search team? Your expertise on the rogue could prove quite useful."

"Be happy to," Garrus called back. "I've been looking to get my talons on that bastard."

"Good luck with him Shepard," Anderson told his subordinate.

"Sir?"

"Orders from upstairs. I'm staying here to help Nihilus track down other leads and help coordinate the search with the Ambassador and the Council. The Normandy's all yours, Commander. Take care of her for me."

Shepard gaped for a moment before snapping a salute. "Yes sir!"

 **The Normandy**

Shepard looked across the bridge as though seeing it for her first time. Her bridge. HER command. This ship was hers. It was a giddy thought.

"This is my ship," she said aloud, smiling. "There are many others like it, but this one is mine!" She giggled uncharacteristically at the thought. " _Mine! Hahahahaha!_ Take that, mom! I have a ship now too! **_Mine!_** "

 _"Uh, right commander, but do you mind not doing the crazy laugh? It's kind of disturbing, ma'am."_

Shepard had the grace to cover her mouth with embarrassment. "Sorry about that, Joker."

 _"No no, it's quite alright. I'm just piloting a ship for an officer who's a little touched in the head. Nothing to it."_

"Well," Shepard went on, moving past her slip of decorum, "the Council gave us coordinates for Therum. Let's get to it!"

 _"Aye aye, ma'am."_

 **The Norak**

Balak couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right. Ever since he had stepped on board the transport, something seemed off. It felt like he was being watched. Other batarians might have chalked it up to simple paranoia. The Alliance was a terrifying enemy with a long reach, much like the Salarian STG. Both groups likely had eyes everywhere.

But Balak was not most batarians. Over the years, he had survived many deadly situations by listening to his instincts. And they were screaming at him that something was about to go down.

"Charn, check in. Anything unusual?"

" _For the last time, no there isn't anything happening down here. I honestly don't know what's gotten into you."_

"Look," Balak growled. "ever since we left Adogene, it feels like someone is watching us. And we're going to strike a blow at the Alliance. We can't be too careful."

 _"You worry too much. If the Alliance really knew about this, they wouldn't have let us get as far as this. You got the intelligence. You managed to find some greedy human with the information we were looking for. We're all here together, and we're on our way. Once we get to the human system, there's nothing that can stop us."_

 _You talk too much, Charn,_ Balak thought. "Did you forget that this is exactly how that first attack on Elysium started? It feels too similar, too easy!"

 _"But this time, we're not taking slaves. We're going to drop a big rock on their planet. Let's see those humans stop that!"_

Balak was about to reply when he heard a sharp pained gasp and something he recognized from long experience as a death rattle, the last gasp of a dying man. A muted impact sounded through the comm before a new voice came on the line. _"Challenge accepted, batarian."_

*break*

Leng dropped the dead man's arm and omnitool and linked his comm into their network. Already, he could hear panicked shouting from his main target and the frantic responses from his thirty-two remaining subordinates. They would all now be on high alert, ready for a fight. Perfect. Let them try to kill him. He would savor the battle, and emerge victorious.

A squad of six soldiers burst through the cargo bay entrance and scanned the room. They were followed by another. Twelve soldiers fanned out, covering the entire bay, and seeing nothing except their dead comrade, stabbed in the back. Leng observed as they clustered a bit from his perch on the smaller transport stored inside the massive cargo bay, and then made his move.

He leapt from the top of the fifteen-meter-high ship, dropping straight down and slicing a soldier in half from head to toe. For extra effect, he allowed his psionic cloak and his stealth generator to drop as he landed. The batarian soldiers whirled around just in time to see their comrade literally fall to pieces before Leng pushed off with his rear leg, switched hands and cut two more soldiers in half with a left slash. He used his right arm to grab one arm of a bifurcated soldier and pirouetted mid-step, swinging the batarian's torso as a makeshift flail. This resulted in some of the dying man's organs flying out straight at the remaining two members of the squad, who instinctively raised their weapons to block. Leng spun again, slashing once more before slamming the makeshift flail into the two soldiers, who similarly slid apart, cut neatly in half.

The other squad had just leveled their weapons from the other side of the bay to open fire when the Alliance assassin reengaged his cloak and vanished. To his credit, the ranking man in the group ordered the soldiers to back against the wall and spread out, sweeping their weapons from side to side and searching for any trace of the enemy. It was, of course, futile. Technology combined with the mental compulsion to unconsciously filter out the sounds of his footsteps and the tell-tale flickering of the generator made Leng completely undetectable to living soldiers. He made his decision and lunged again.

*break*

Balak listened to the panicked yelling of his men down in the bay as the enemy butchered them. He could even see the action on the ship's camera network. A distant part of him noted that the Alliance certainly knew how to forge living weapons as the man down below combined swift blade-work, astonishing agility, some level of augmented strength and that damned stealth technology into a deadly whirlwind of steel and flesh, tearing his men apart like paper.

Still, he wasn't done in yet. He ordered the rest of the team to take up positions along the hall to the cargo bay and for someone to wire up a booby trap on the door. Unfortunately, the assassin simply punched the door inward, sending the explosive block right into the first line of men, wiping out another four and bringing his team down to half strength. In the chaos of the explosion, the assassin had effectively teleported to the back line and mercilessly mowed down more batarian fighters as they reoriented to shoot at him.

Leng laughed darkly as he effortlessly dodged the incoming fire from terrified enemies. This was it. This was the kind of thrill he wanted, the sense of existing on the precarious edge of a razor. One slip, one misstep, one failure to act would result in death. A wide rocket whose exhaust singed his hair, a sniper's round passing just behind his thigh, a wild swing with a combat knife from a terrified batarian that just grazed his cheek, each was a picturesque moment for him as he retaliated with precise and unavoidable death.

Balak snarled as he hefted his Revenant gun and hosed the hallway with gunfire. With contemptuous ease, the assassin first slid and then back-flipped over the deadly hail before lashing out with a careless swing and chopping off the front of the machine gun. The elite former SIU agent went for his pistol only for Leng to swiftly remove his gun arm.

"So close, yet so very far away, alien scum," Leng commented as he stood above his target. "You have as much chance of killing me as you do of getting off this ship."

"Finish it, then!" Balak hissed. "Kill me like you killed my men, Alliance butcher!"

"Oh I will," Leng said. "But I want your death to be spectacular." And he backhanded the agent into the ship's bridge. As the batarian agent struggled to regain his bearings through the pain, the Alliance assassin moved over to the bridge computer and began typing on it. The ship's mass effect envelop dropped, returning it to subluminal speed before the reverse thrusters halted the ship. After noting the current location, Leng slotted a copied VI chip into the terminal and entered in more commands. Balak struggled to his feet and turned to face the assassin before Leng tore a piece of the bulkhead out and threw it at the batarian's leg where it sliced through his calf muscle and dropped him to one knee in pain. Finished with his work, Leng moved to grab the batarian and pinned him against the wall with a knife through his wrist.

"You wanted to slam something into a planet, didn't you?" he asked. "Then let's make it yours. Enjoy the trip back to Adogene."

Balak's eyes widened in horror and he struggled to pull himself off the wall, but the knife held fast. "You can't do this! You're a monster!" he yelled as Leng moved past him back down to the cargo bay.

"It takes one to know one, doesn't it?" Leng replied before boarding the smaller craft. The VI uploaded onto the bridge opened the doors long enough for the Alliance assassin to depart before closing, turning around, and engaging FTL back to Adogene.

 **Adogene**

The planet was home to the largest concentration of Hegemony remnants in the galaxy, but they only made up a mere ten percent of its total population. Having served the Hegemony as an industrial world for centuries, the planet was fairly heavily populated, and a relief fleet carrying supplies from the Citadel was preparing to land when the worst struck.

From the depths of space, the cargo ship that had so recently departed on its attempted mission of terrorism sailed back into system at nearly ten times the speed of light, unerringly guided to its target by the onboard VI. Massing at nearly twenty million kilograms without the benefit of the mass effect envelope, the resulting energy yield at impact would be a mind boggling 18 _hexatons_ of TNT.

To call the impact catastrophic would be to call a five hundred megaton warhead a "small firecracker." The ship plowed into the surface of the planet and well beyond, penetrating nearly thirty miles deep before completely disintegrating. The detonation of the mass effect core which vaporized the ship wasn't even noticeable in the resulting tectonic chaos above.

With an entire landmass to absorb the impact, the plate slid down into the planetary mantle nearly six hundred meters before it stopped, and then rebounded upward. Needless to say, the effects of uncountable quadrillions of tons of rock moving down then springing back up sent shockwaves throughout the planet. The impacted plate fractured as it settled back down, allowing a titanic flood of magma, newly heated from the forced compression of the planet's mantle by the motions of the plates, to erupt and cover the entire landmass. The rest of the planet was not spared this catastrophe. Other plates similarly fractured, and one particularly unfortunate section inexplicably overturned. In a few minutes, the surface of Adogene went from an industrialized colony planet to a roiling and quaking hellish landscape.

The atmosphere wasn't spared either. With the massive release of magma came unleashed dissolved gases rich in sulfur and nitrogen that spewed into the atmosphere, choking what little life might have survived the tectonic disaster and completing the destruction by blanketing the planet in a Venusian cloud of greenhouse gases. The relief fleet could only watch in horror as a planet of many innocents died before their eyes.

 _Codex: Alliance Relations - Quarians_

 _From the time of the Ethereal Conflict, humanity has made judicious use of AI in many aspects of life. The Quarian race's sad story of the creation of the geth makes the Alliance that much more distrustful of the Citadel and the Quarians themselves. The Citadel, for refusing to aid a race of refugees who were an established part of their civilization, and the Quarians for being stupid enough to create a race of rogue AI without a failsafe control. However, certain aspects of the Alliance citizenry have voiced the possibility of giving the Quarians a second chance, leading to independent efforts to reach out to the displaced race._

 _The Quarians themselves are more than a little fearful of the Alliance due to their ruthlessness in war and their own comparative racial frailty. While the Migrant Fleet is the largest fleet of ships in the galaxy, most are non-combative, and none can compare even to an Alliance Naval cruiser._

 _Addendum: With the recent news of the geth allying with Saren during the attack on Eden Prime, the Alliance has begun reaching out to the quarians for anti-geth expertise._

 _Codex: Laser vs Plasma based weaponry_

 _While laser weapons have the benefit of not activating kinetic barrier defenses, they do have some serious drawbacks._

 _1) Nearly all of their weapon damage is heat based due to lack of a material component. In comparison, plasma is a physical substance capable of inflicting shearing trauma in addition to thermal._

 _2) Lasers require enormous amounts of power, modulation, and cooling time. Plasma by contrast requires much less power to be similarly effective, thus shots can be fired to make up for the relatively low damage._

 **As you may have noticed, Shepard is a mite unstable in this story.**

 **And so Kai Leng becomes the first person in history to assassinate a planet. What a psychopathic dick, eh?**

 **Obviously as a result of this, there will be no Bring Down the Sky chapter.**

 **For those who don't quite grasp the scale, that is _ten trillion times_ the power of 1.8 kilotons of TNT. By comparison, the Chicxulub or Yucatan Impact crater that probably wiped out the dinosaurs from 65 million years ago was ONLY around 100 teratons, or 100 million times the power of 1 kt of TNT. The only reasons Adogene survives without losing much of its planetary mass is:**

 **1) This wasn't a glancing impact. The entire planet served as a backstop.**

 **2) Twenty million kilograms is roughly the weight of a lightly loaded container ship. That's NOTHING compared to an asteroid of solid rock and metal 10 kilometers in diameter.**

 **And this is why the Alliance forbids Element Zero FTL ships from entering their territory, with the exception of Shanxi. This is also why any scifi story that involves private interstellar space travel using acceleration-based FTL is beyond idiotic.**

 **Review!**


	11. Tactics

**Sorry about the wait.**

 **1) It's hot as balls where I'm stationed right now.**

 **2) This chapter was awkward for me to write since I pretty much had to stick to how canon went with the layout of the mine and the mission events.**

Chapter Ten

 **The Normandy**

Garrus whistled appreciatively upon laying eyes on the laser cannon apparatus. This baby looked awesome, even if the Alliance considered the thing a "second tier" weapon. He could just imagine the sensation of this thing spinning up its magnetic armatures for battle. And he wasn't the only one drooling over this particular example of Alliance technology. Tali was peppering the Chief Engineer…Adams, if he remembered correctly, with questions regarding the details of its operational theory.

"This ship is so small! How do you have enough power to run a free electron laser with this kind of output?"

"I can't tell you the specifics. Information about the core systems is classified. Needless to say that our ships have much more energetic drive systems than your Element Zero drives. What I can tell you is that our ship hulls are far sturdier than yours, and while we do use mass effect envelopes, we don't need them as much. We can get away with propelling larger loads and therefore there's less of a power draw on the core. Long story short, better hulls and a larger drive core means less energy spent on mass effect fields and more available for weapons."

Behind her mask, Tali's eyes glowed with excitement. Many a quarian nursed a slight resentment for the Council for abandoning them in the aftermath of the Morning War. The news that the turian military had been forcibly humbled before a newly discovered race had been met with small celebrations. The information that came after that had set the rank and file abuzz. Directed energy weapons for infantry? A non-reliance on Element Zero? Powered armor systems well beyond anything even the Salarians could develop? Any one of the rumored technologies possessed by the Alliance could easily allow the quarians to reclaim Rannoch from the geth.

But Tali had seen her father and his fellow admirals argue over whether or not to reach out to humanity. Their actions with regard to the Batarian Hegemony were most disquieting. Information provided by sympathetic supporters within the Citadel told them about the Alliance's usage of disassembler nanites, a weapon straight out of science fiction horror stories. There was also the highly-publicized execution of General Desolas, and the Torfan Example. If nothing else, the available information made it perfectly clear how ruthless and xenophobic the Alliance could be, which might not bode well for a crippled race such as theirs.

To get their hands on Alliance technology was widely seen as the "holiest of holies," one of the greatest potential gifts a quarian returning from pilgrimage could bring back to the fleet. But the dangers and near-impossibility of such a venture had stayed many an enterprising child. Tali had never in her wildest dreams imagined that she would have this chance, and she absolutely intended to make the most of it. If she could just pry the details of even one of their secrets out to send back to the fleet, it would be of immeasurable worth to her people.

"I would love the chance to look at your engines," the girl said almost dreamily.

"They are quite a piece of work," Adams agreed. "Unfortunately, that area is off limits. Alliance secrets. It's a real shame. I think that you're the only new visitor who would have a chance at understanding them, and I rarely get the chance to teach people as it is."

"You know," Garrus cut in, "if you don't mind me asking, why doesn't the Normandy have plasma cannons? This isn't a Militia ship. This is the actual Alliance Navy."

"Information control procedures. We had Nihlus Kryik embedded on the ship, so we switched out the weapons systems. People can look at the lasers all they want. We'll keep the better toys to ourselves."

 _If that isn't paranoia, I don't know what is,_ Garrus thought. _Then again, they have a damn good reason to be careful._ "Why aren't you going back to swap in your real armament? From what I saw of Saren's dreadnaught, you'll need all the firepower you can get on something this small."

Adams snorted. "One, because of security reasons. Two, even if we had our proper armament, it wouldn't do much to that thing. This laser is what we mount on our Militia cruisers, and it barely pierced the hull. The only real difference the plasma cannons would make is how fast we could shoot." Of course, that wasn't strictly true. The original fusion lances could definitely do some serious damage. But the Spectre didn't need to know that. "If we're going to destroy that thing, we'll call in one of our own dreadnoughts."

Before Garrus could speak again, his omnitool chimed. "The hell?" _Is someone messaging me? How are they getting a signal to me when the Alliance doesn't have the Extranet?_ "Oh hi dad."

 _"Garrus, were you at Warehouse 223?"_

"Uh, yes. So were Nihlus and the Alliance soldiers. Why do you ask?"

 _"Because you left a little package here. Kind of an explosive one, really. You mind telling us how to disarm it?"_

Garrus grabbed his face. _Whoops._ "How do you know it's mine, dad?" he asked in an innocent tone that fooled absolutely no one.

 _"You wrote 'From Vakarian with hate, scumbags.' From one cop to another, Garrus, you want to avoid leaving evidence behind."_

"It was supposed to explode…" he trailed off lamely.

 _"Then next time remember to push the damn trigger!"_

*break*

Shepard jolted upright from her bed in her newly furnished (yet somewhat bare) quarters. Another flashback. Another haunting experience she'd longed to put behind herself. As she mashed her palms against her face, she focused on the one image that had been distinctly out of place. For some reason, the word "Reapers" echoed in her head. The alien images had joined her repressed memories while the word echoed in Saren's voice in the background.

Brushing it off as her anger towards the rogue turian for his actions, she slipped out of bed and donned her undersuit and hit the ship's intercom.

"Joker, what's our ETA?"

 _"We should hit Therum in about four hours ma'am. You want us to exit at the edge of the system in case those geth are already there?"_

"Good idea. Make it happen."

 _"Aye aye, ma'am."_

"Pressly, any leads from Captain Anderson yet?"

 _"No ma'am,"_

"Alenko, run the Spectre and the quarian through weapons familiarization."

 _"You're bringing her on the mission, ma'am? She's a civilian, and she's not a Citadel representative."_

"I don't like it either, but she's the expert on the geth. I'll need to bring her and the Spectre with me. You and Williams will join the marines for ground action, so get everyone suited up and ready."

 _"Yes ma'am."_

"Chief Adams?"

 _"Reporting, ma'am."_

"I want a full ops check on our laser cannons and engines. Joker will probably be going hot on this one."

 _"Right away, ma'am."_

 **Tartarus**

 _"When I approved Cerberus, it was with the understanding that questionable actions would be taken to ensure humanity's future. I fail to see how the destruction of an entire planet assures our future, doctor,"_

"I-I assure you that Adogene's destruction was not part of our agent's orders, sir!" Dr. Core stammered. "Agent Leng acted beyond his bounds. We will take steps to assure that it won't happen again."

 _"You'd better."_ And with that threatening undertone, General Summers's image cut out. Core whirled around to the sound of private chuckling.

"Well I hope you're bloody happy!" she snapped at Harper.

"Oh I assure you that I am quite infuriated with Agent Leng's actions. But that doesn't mean I can't find amusement in the general's heavy-handed manners."

"You could have fooled me," the doctor muttered. "Do you have any idea what will happen because of this?"

"In the short term, the main part of the Hegemony remnant has been eliminated. The rather public example of how a planet can be destroyed by overriding the programmed drive safeties should lead to a very strong crackdown on unauthorized travel. I would daresay that the Council will have something to say about this that will infuriate many of their people." Harper paused in thought. "The troubling part would be how nearly all of the Citadel races would suspect our involvement. The one thing in our favor is that no bodies can be found. The evidence was destroyed when the ship impacted the planet. They can blame us as much as they want, but without real proof…"

"Come on, Jack. You know that all people need is the impression of guilt to do stupid things to 'punish' others. This will come back to bite us."

"Then we can fabricate some. Disseminate rumors pinning full blame on the Hegemony remnant. There is little the Citadel races wouldn't put past them, after all. Attacking a planet of 'rebels and traitors' to incite a possible larger war between us and the Council is a plausible scenario for them, and it could satisfy the public's need for an agent provocateur to pin the blame on."

"That could work…" Core agreed reluctantly. "But we'll have to be damned careful about it."

"Consult with our brothers in Intelligence to come up with a plan for that. If nothing else, we need something to assure the Council. In the meantime, pull Kai Leng from the field for consultations. Perhaps someone with more subtlety in the near future."

Core dutifully typed herself a note before remembering something else. "Oh, we've concluded our 'autopsies' of the geth bodies from Eden Prime. Coupled with what that quarian Shepard went after on the Citadel had to tell us, we've managed to identify the networking communication equipment that these combat units are equipped with. Based on software reconstruction, we've identified the comm frequencies the geth use to share data between units. I'd say this is a very valuable piece of intelligence."

"And why would that be?" Harper queried.

"By scanning on these frequencies and pinging for responses from each unit, we could create a locator program that would allow our soldiers to pinpoint their location on the battlefield. They would be impossible for the geth to ambush."

"Could you employ those tactics from orbit?"

"Only when the geth are present in sufficient numbers. They would have to boost power to their communications or have established units in orbit for us to track from."

"Send your findings to Anderson, and have him forward them to the Normandy. I have no doubt that Shepard will be able to test out your theory."

"You say that like you have no faith in my research," Eva chided.

"Call it conservatism. Initial theories usually have flaws, doctor."

"Killjoy."

 **The Normandy**

When Shepard arrived on the bridge in full gear, Lieutenant Pressly ran up to her.

"Ma'am, message from the captain. Our people have extrapolated the geth comm frequencies."

Shepard raised an eyebrow as she read the full message. "Get the quarian up here."

"Yes ma'am."

A few minutes later, Garrus and Tali stepped off the elevator. "What gives, commander?" The Spectre asked.

"Tali, do you think you can use these frequencies to locate the geth on the planet if they're down there?"

Tali blinked behind her mask before reading the message. "I suppose I could. But why?"

"We're trying to search a planet, and we're just one ship. That's a lot of area to cover and we don't have time to waste. If there are geth on the planet and they're after the asari, we can just follow their trail. Also, this is a volcanic planet according to the Council. That'll make our search somewhat easier, but I still don't want to have to drive a badly-made APC around half the planet looking for a blue archaeologist."

"You sound like you're hoping the geth are actually there," Garrus noted.

"Like I said, we could just follow their trail and make our search much easier. We find the largest concentration, blast them from orbit, secure an LZ, and we go in after her."

"Orbital bombardment? And they say I cause collateral damage."

"It's a laser, Vakarian," Shepard justified. "It's not going to cause an impact crater. It'll just melt or explode what it hits."

 _"Commander, we'll hit Therum in about ten minutes."_

"Thanks Joker." Shepard returned her gaze to the two in front of her. "Get down to the bay and board the Skyranger. If you see the lieutenant commander, tell him to move his ass. We'll be going in hot."

"You know, technically I don't take orders from you," Garrus threw out as he and Tali moved toward the elevator.

Shepard rolled her eyes before turning to Pressly. "You're in charge while we're gone. Once we drop, do whatever it takes to deal with any geth in orbit. When you're clear, have Joker give the rear guard some orbital strike support."

"Got it ma'am. Good luck."

 **Therum**

As it turned out, there was an orbital presence around the planet. The geth cruiser was caught quite off guard when the Normandy materialized right behind its engines and forcibly depowered them with a precision strike through the hull.

The loss of engine power did not prevent the ship from launching its fighter contingent in pursuit of the Alliance prowler however, and Joker spent an agonizing twenty minutes ducking and dodging around the geth ship to avoid enemy attack before Tali finished her work.

 _"Any day now would be nice! It's kind of hard to deal with enemy fighters when you're driving something ten times bigger than they are!"_

"And it's kind of hard for me to focus on hacking into the geth network while you're trying to make me throw up in my suit, bosh'tet!" Tali swore as the Normandy performed another maneuver that the manufacturers would have told anyone was physically impossible in space.

 _"Oh sorry, I figured you'd like surviving better than a smash landing on the planet down below!"_

"Knock it off you two," Shepard growled, from her seat at the very rear of the Skyranger. "Save it for the enemy."

Joker nearly flinched as a pulse cannon shot from a geth fighter blazed past the cockpit. _"Alright, that's it!"_ In an impressive display of piloting, Joker flipped the ship backwards while maintaining its previous velocity and allowed the firing computer to go fully automatic as he slewed the prow about. Six of the fourteen geth fighters were picked off before they abruptly split in several directions to minimize the chance of being hit.

"Got it!" Tali exclaimed. "I have the triangulation data!"

 _"Send it to me,"_ Pressly ordered.

As Tali complied, Joker took the ship for another wormhole jump behind the cruiser and fired again, this time spearing the cruiser's critically active mass effect core. With the sudden failure of containment, the core blew out, unleashing a massive burst of Dark Energy within the hull as the drives capacitors discharged into the swirling mass of Element Zero. A wave of repulsive force tore apart the internal superstructure and the bulkheads, blasting the cruiser into two halves and crushing any geth still aboard.

With the loss of the cruiser, the geth fighters became much less coordinated, and five more minutes of action eliminated the rest, leaving the Normandy in sole control of the orbital space.

 _"According to the data,"_ Pressly continued, _"the geth are spread out, but moving mainly into one area. Looks like they found the asari, commander."_

"Launch the Skyranger and start firing at them," Shepard ordered.

The bay door opened as the Normandy oriented itself toward the planet, and then the Skyranger activated its boosters and shot downward. Everyone aboard held their breath as they descended. "We're at fifty thousand, ma'am," the pilot called out.

"Fast drop it!" Shepard replied. Every human quickly adopted a brace position, which Garrus and Tali quickly copied.

Every geth in the target area had been informed of the space battle and was aiming at the incoming dropship. The pilot snarled as he began to encounter anti-air fire while closing in. Then a violet beam flashed by the craft and struck a rocky outcropping where a several large guns were mounted. The surface exploded as the beam delivered its energy into the rocky area in the center, which then superheated the air directly above and created an area of insanely high atmospheric pressure. The sudden differential resulted in an expanding wave of superheated plasmified air that shredded the turrets and a rather large four-legged mobile geth unit along with its attending entourage of forces. What was left was consumed by a lava flow as the outcropping collapsed.

As the defensive positions fell to precision fire from the Normandy, the incoming hail dropped to nothing as the geth abandoned their established positions to seek some form of cover from the rain of laser fire. Uninhibited, the pilot finally reached ground level at the central area, something that looked like a mining outpost.

Tali squeezed her eyes shut to fight off the nausea in her stomach as the dropship abruptly decelerated. Then she felt the ship's ramp slam down on the ground outside and heard several loud bangs as large metal plates detached from the ship and planted themselves on the ground.

"Move move move!" Shepard called as she unbuckled herself and sprinted down the ramp. The rest of the team followed behind her, As Garrus and Tali made their way off, the ramp folded back up and the dropship lifted into an overwatch position. Meanwhile, Alenko and Williams directed the marine contingent to spread out into defensive positions.

"Better get on with it ma'am," Alenko said, nodding towards a hole dug into the rock behind them. "We'll keep the exit clear for you."

Shepard returned the nod and gestured for Garrus and Tali to follow her into the tunnel. "Did the Council tell you anything about this dig site?" she asked the Spectre.

"You know as much as I do," Garrus admitted.

"There are some geth units up ahead," Tali called as they approached the end of the tunnel. "A few of them are on the catwalk. The rest are farther away."

"Garrus, stay here and cover me. Tali, make sure no one comes behind us. I know the team is guarding that end, but it doesn't hurt to be safe."

"Wait, you're going out there on your own?!"

"I got you, commander," Garrus replied, motioning for Tali to calm down.

The geth were unprepared for the armored blur that raced across the catwalk faster than any living being was supposed to. The three snipers covering the catwalk didn't even attempt to take their shots before Shepard shredded one of the units advancing towards her with a heavy laser and shoved her fist through a second. One sniper suddenly sprouted a hole in its chest cavity and dropped, followed by another. Meanwhile, Shepard ducked and weaved around the remaining two closer enemies before eviscerating them in a hail of red. The final sniper took the opportunity to fire, only to experience the computerized equivalent of confusion as the human reacted inexplicably fast, dodging the shot. Before the geth could fire another, it too joined its brethren in destruction.

"Clear!" Shepard called over the radio and motioned for Garrus and Tali to regroup. As they closed up, Shepard noted with amusement that the quarian appeared to be staring at her in complete awe. "Close your jaw and let's move."

Garrus chuckled as Tali jerked in mild embarrassment. "And that's why I didn't argue with her."

The catwalk sloped downward and ended before a large kinetic barrier. "Where the hell is this even coming from?" the commander muttered as she examined it.

"No way to shut it off from here," Garrus pointed out. "We'll have to go around."

"Over here!" Tali called, indicating a freight elevator platform nearby. The three stepped onto it before Garrus pressed the control and sent it downward. When they stepped off, they were greeted with the sight of a pile of medical supplies.

"No need to worry about first aid, I guess," Garrus chuckled.

"Says you," Tali muttered.

They moved along to another elevator platform, which smoked ominously. Garrus eyed it dubiously. "Do we have to take this down?"

"I don't have to," Shepard answered. "But you two probably wouldn't take the drop very well, and it's better not to split up while we're down here. You see another way down?"

The Spectre shook his head and they boarded the platform. Mercifully, nothing untoward happened while they descended. The team ended up in an area littered with twisted metal. Shepard winced as their footsteps echoed through the area.

"I-is someone out there?" a woman's voice called.

"Commander Shepard of the Alliance," Shepard answered. "I'm here with a Council Spectre. You're Liara T'Soni?"

"Oh thank the goddess, you're not the geth!" As the team made their way around a corner, they could see a blue woman suspended in mid-air behind a barrier.

"Yo," Garrus waved. "Spectre Vakarian here. You mind coming with us? This place isn't exactly safe at the moment."

"I noticed," the nervous asari replied, "but I'm stuck in this field. When the geth attacked, I guess I touched something I shouldn't have."

"I'm detecting a power signature down below," Tali reported as she fiddled with her omnitool.

"And that looks like an elevator shaft back there," Shepard commented.

"It is," Liara confirmed. "I was making my way down when the geth attacked."

"Then we just need to find that elevator," Garrus finished.

"Watch out," the scientist warned. "A krogan and some geth came by a while ago."

At that moment, a rocket detonated against the barrier, throwing the team backwards, and eliciting a scream of terror from the asari behind it.

"Thanks for the warning!" Shepard snarled as she scrambled back up and faced the source, diving over the railing and dropping into a pit of geth.

Garrus braced his rifle against the rail, keyed a special ammunition selection, and fired. The shot exploded in mid-air, unleashing an EMP burst that covered the area. The geth platforms lacked the proper shielding to prevent their computer cores from being fried by externally induced current. Shepard stood in the center of the pit, feeling somewhat stupid for having literally jumped the gun.

"Can't let you take all the kills," Garrus called cheekily.

"Whatever…" Shepard muttered. She looked over the area and noticed a flickering computer that had miraculously survived the EMP burst. "Tali, can you get information off this thing?"

"If it wasn't fried in the blast," the quarian answered as she pushed past. "You could have warned me you were going to do that," she chided the Spectre. "It appears to contain map data for the caverns here. According to this, there's some sort of hallway underneath the ground. It appears to go straight toward the power source I detected."

"Well that tells us where to go," Garrus commented. "Now how do we dig through this?"

"With that." The other two turned to where Shepard was pointing. "I'm no expert on digging equipment, but that huge thing looks like a mining laser."

"Hope it's still useable," Tali opined.

"Only one way to find out. Let's move this thing."

As it turned out, the automated system was fried. Garrus and Tali manually adjusted the actuators with some clever jury-rigging on the circuit breaker box until the laser pointed at the floor in the direction of the underground hallway.

"Better stand back," Tali warned. "If I'm reading right, this thing has a yield in gigajoules."

The laser fired at the ground in a short burst, transmitting all its energy in the span of a nanosecond. The unsupported layer of rock covering the underground passage exploded downward, pelting the walls below with molten fragments and a few large chunks. The team waited for the dust to settle and the edges of the hole to stop glowing before making their way in.

"Looks like we got something," Garrus noted.

The cavern shook suddenly, and an ominous rumble echoed throughout the depths as the elevator carried them up to Liara's level.

"What the hell was that?" Shepard growled as she ran to the console and deactivated the field keeping the asari suspended.

"This area isn't really stable," the scientist replied as she slowly got to her feet. "I'd imagine that the geth attack isn't really helping in that respect."

Her words were punctuated by the sudden crash of several tons of rock crumpling the catwalk outside the barrier like cardboard.

"Yeah, I think we should be going," Garrus called from the elevator.

Shepard grabbed Liara around the waist, ignoring the squawk of surprise from the woman, and jumped on the elevator as it began to rise farther upward. "Alenko, we've got the doctor, and we're probably not coming back out the way we came. Get ready to pick us up topside."

 _"Where are you, ma'am? Your signal is hard to track at the moment."_

"Don't know," the commander admitted. "I'll let you know once we're out."

The ground around them shook even more as the elevator reached the top. The roaring sound was the only warning that something was amiss before a barrage of gunfire rained down on them.

"Ah!" Liara screamed, covering her head and running to take cover behind a pillar.

"Krogan!" Garrus called as he pulled out his pistol and shot down a floating drone.

"I'm on it," Shepard snarled.

The krogan laughed even as the geth under his command began falling to deadly accurate precision fire or electrical arcs from the quarian. At least his quarry was putting up a fight. That would make it all the more fun when he tore them apart. The human woman would be first, he decided. He would see how well she would hold up against good old fashioned krogan brute force.

He mentally triggered his biotics and prepared to catapult himself towards the woman while enveloped in a mass effect envelope. But something seemed off as his feet left the floor. She was moving quite fast. In fact, as time slowed down for him, she still seemed to be moving at normal speed. She was bracing her back foot and readying a fist almost like-

Shepard roared as she lashed out with her arm, colliding with the massive armored krogan warrior traveling the opposite direction at nearly fifty kilometers an hour. Her enhanced strength meant that her gauntleted hand smashed through his chest armor, into his chest cavity, and exited his back by traveling through his spinal column, shattering the bone and severing the nerves. The forward momentum of the krogan forced her to pivot right, effectively swinging the body off her arm and sending the warrior sprawling across the floor. Shepard ignored the sudden concentration of fire in her direction and leapt into the air before smashing her fist into the dying warrior's head crest, piercing through it and making a mash of the krogan's brain matter.

"Commander!" Tali shouted a warning as a geth trooper launched a rocket at the woman as she stood up. The rocket exploded on impact. In that moment, horror coursed through the quarian at the sight. But then something charged out of the smoke cloud and forcibly disassembled the offending geth trooper with one immensely powerful punch. As the last geth fell to Garrus's pistol, Tali's mind replayed the entire scene. "Keelah…"

"By the goddess…" Liara whispered in awe as the commander shook off remnants of metal and flesh from her fist.

Garrus whistled appreciatively as he holstered his pistol and looked closely at the krogan's corpse. "Overkill and a taste for applied violence. What a woman."

Tali recovered enough to sniff dismissively at the Spectre. "Men."

 **The Normandy**

As everyone disembarked from the Skyranger, Shepard could feel someone glaring at her. She looked across the bay and saw a familiar-looking krogan mercenary who looked somewhat annoyed.

"Uh, what's his problem?" Alenko wondered, noticing him as well.

Shepard rubbed her neck sheepishly. "I had a feeling I was forgetting something…" she answered lamely.

 _Codex: Alliance Intelligence_

 _The parent organization of Cerberus, Intelligence proper focuses mainly on internal threats and security while Cerberus handles outside threats. The Alliance's paranoia results in Intelligence embedding liason officers within human corporations to ensure their operations in no way threaten the Alliance. Such heavy-handed methods have alienated many business leaders who are offended at the implication of being suspected of treason. This is one of the main reasons a number of humans have left Alliance territory, preferring to enjoy more freedom outside from prying eyes and influence._

 _Codex: Elerium_

 _Within the entirety of the known galaxy, there exists only one facility for producing and refining the keystone element of the Alliance's technology. The station is currently guarded by the Ninth Fleet. Every shipment of Elerium from the station is escorted by the Alliance Navy to its destination, and each company that is authorized to receive a shipment is carefully vetted and monitored by the tireless Cydonians. For additional security, each company has a retinue of soldiers stationed to observe all usage of the element within the manufacturing processes of each contracting company. Elerium-derived products may only legally be sold to the Alliance military._

 _Unauthorized sale or usage of Elerium is considered treasonous. A number of highly-publicized incidents within the Alliance have heavily discouraged any unscrupulous individuals who have considered such actions. It's a testament to the Alliance's security measures that despite the twenty-six year standing bounty from the Citadel for Alliance technology, no Elerium has made its way out of Alliance territory into the hands of the Council races._

 **Poor Wrex. He missed out on the fun!**

 **How's that for taking out a Krogan?**

 **One thing that's bothered me about the geth is how no one addressed or exploited their obvious vulnerabilities. The geth are a networked AI and each unit functions as a node, allowing for inter-unit communications through wireless signals.**

 **Yeah, this would make them hyper-efficient in coordination, but it's also a huge weakness. There's a reason that military operations emphasize EMCON (emissions control). If you can find it, you can hit it. And if you can hit it, you can kill it. Communications are a dead giveaway in the field, and a bunch of constantly communicating infantry makes it damn near impossible NOT to know where they are.**

 **And yet NOBODY in Mass Effect ever takes advantage of this. Instead, they have you drive the Mako through the ass end of a planet and go through waves of enemies that you should by all logic be able to detect from their own communication systems.**

 ***sigh* That's logic for you. BW style.**

 **Review!**


	12. Which Only Work Once

**And here's the new chapter. Took me a while to get around to looking up the Noveria missions so I could write this.**

 **The Citadel's new tech makes an appearance here.**

Chapter Eleven

 **The Normandy**

"You touched a working Prothean beacon, commander?" Liara's eyes shone with excitement as the human sat across from her on another bed in the medical bay while Dr. Chakwas clucked and administered to her.

"No," Shepard replied flatly, waiting a bit to enjoy Liara's downcast expression. "I got zapped before I could get close."

"Oh don't tease her like that commander," Karin put in reprovingly as she sifted through a universal Asari profile. "The commander has been having visions after her interaction with the artifact, for which she has refused medical treatment." The doctor punctuated that statement with a glare at her troublesome patient.

"I can handle myself," the commander replied defiantly.

"That is your own personal opinion, Erin Shepard. But you do not have the benefit of a medical and psychiatric education. As a soldier, never mind an officer, your health is of utmost importance to your duties. It is imperative that you do whatever is required to keep yourself in good condition. I have indulged your independent tendencies due to a lack of an impairment in your abilities, but I won't hesitate to pull rank on you and lock you in my ward if I have to, commander," the doctor stated firmly.

Shepard sighed. "Fine, if it makes you happy, go ahead."

"Doctor Chakwas," Liara spoke up.

"You may call me Karin, dear."

"Karin, maybe I could help with the commander's visions. The Protheans are my field of study, after all. By all accounts, Saren accessed that beacon for a reason. If we can figure out what it is, maybe it could help."

"You may do that after I evaluate her," the doctor replied. "You are free to go. I do believe that Lieutenant Commander Alenko wished to speak with you about temporary lodgings on the ship."

"Thank you, Karin." With that, Liara made her way over to Alenko's office.

"Ah, Dr. Chakwas finished your checkup, Miss T'Soni?"

" 'Liara' will be fine. And yes, nothing but a few scratches and close calls."

"I hear you handled yourself pretty well for a scientist in a firefight."

"There's usually a lower volume of gunfire at my project sites," Liara noted ruefully.

"And there usually aren't geth trying to take you out, I'd imagine."

Liara frowned. "Actually, I think they were trying to capture me."

"What makes you say that, ma'am?"

"If they really wanted to just kill me, they would have just collapsed the mine. They were waiting at the top of the elevator."

"Interesting," Alenko noted. "Now that you mention it, we took out a geth ship in orbit before we rescued you. That ship could probably have just sent search parties after you, and then fired at the mine once they located you. What do you think Saren might have wanted with you?"

Liara shook her head. "I don't know. And you say that my mother is with him?"

"According to Tali'Zorah, the quarian who was with you, your mother and Saren were recorded talking to each other about the attack on our colony world. Councilor Tevos positively identified her voice for us, which is why we came looking for you."

"May I see the record myself?"

"Let me pull it up."

As the recording played, Liara closed her eyes, drifting into memories of happier times with her mother. "That really was her…" she breathed. "How could she? How could she be part of that?!"

"Well out of all of us on the ship, you know her best."

Liara looked downcast. "I used to…" she whispered. Alenko took that as a cue to move on.

"I'm putting you in room A-7, Liara. Just try and keep it together. We're all looking for answers. We'll find them."

 **The Citadel, Council Chambers**

"You found her, Vakarian?"

 _"That should be obvious,"_ the turian replied. _"Alive, somewhat traumatized, but still in one piece."_

"Given your methods and what we know of the Alliance, I would think she'd be more than a little traumatized," Sparatus muttered.

"Can she tell us anything about Benezia's reasons for working with Saren?" Tevos asked, shooting a glare at Sparatus.

 _"Big negative on that one. They haven't talked for years. Only thing that might be useful is her knowledge on Prothean artifacts. Saren went after the one in Alliance territory for a reason. It'd be a good idea to find out why."_

"And what opposition did you face?" Valern queried.

 _"Geth cruiser and some land units. The Alliance came up with a brilliant idea for dealing with them by the way. It made the mission short and sweet."_

"Indeed. Could you elaborate?"

 _"They reconstructed the geth communication protocols from the Eden Prime attack and used them as a base for the quarian girl we rescued to hack into the network and ping each combat platform on the planet for triangulation. That's how they found Dr. T'Soni."_

"I fail to see how mapping individual geth units would help with that," Tevos piped up.

"Brilliant," Valern breathed. "They let the geth do the work of locating Dr. T'Soni for them."

 _"Yeah. They also used the geth protocols to make it so they couldn't ambush us. I don't completely understand it, so you'd have to ask the quarian."_

"I'm surprised you don't, Vakarian," Sparatus chided. "If you remember your time in service, you should know about EMCON and the dangers of failing to observe it. Since you said that the quarian girl triangulated the geth using their communications protocols, she also probably mirrored a false identity that could receive their communications in the field and constructed a program to calculate their physical locations." Valern, Tevos and Garrus stared at the councilor in stunned amazement. "During my service, I was an electronics warfare officer. This was one of our devised methods of potentially dealing with geth forces."

"After seeing this, I would think the geth will adapt against it," Valern noted. "They are AI. Communications protocols are a simple thing to change. You were lucky the geth were complacent, Vakarian."

Garrus shrugged through the line. _"I didn't really do much,"_ he admitted. _"The commander did most of the fighting. I'll send the footage when we get to a decent Extranet nexus."_

"That would be deeply appreciated."

 _"So do you have any other possible leads for us? Personal insight on a target and archaeology isn't really much of a gift basket from Dr. T'Soni."_

 _"They don't,"_ Nihlus cut in as his hologram appeared on the terminal as well. _"But we do."_

"Care to enlighten us, Kryik?" Tevos asked.

 _"On my authority, I allowed Captain Anderson's best network specialists access to Saren's personnel file. They've been tracing Saren's financial activities. I also called up Tularea Banking on Illium and ordered them to turn over Benezia's transaction records and freeze her account. They cross referenced the files and they found that Saren and Benezia are both heavy investors in a company called Binary Helix. Also, another enemy that Saren made sent some information to the Alliance Embassy that Saren had recently shown up several times at a Binary Helix research outpost on Noveria."_

"I'm surprised they allowed you access," Tevos thought aloud.

 _"Oh they tried to stonewall me. I told them that I had General Summers of the Alliance Military on the other line threatening something horribly destructive if they didn't cooperate."_

 _"Neat trick,"_ Garrus noted. _"I'll have to try that sometime."_

"Spectre Kryik, kindly refrain from giving Spectre Vakarian ill-considered ideas," Valern chided.

 _"I wasn't kidding about that actually. The general wanted Captain Anderson and the ambassador to update him on the search efforts."_

"Naturally," Sparatus replied in a long-suffering tone.

"It's quite the coincidence that you mention the planet Noveria," Valern continued. "The Union recently obtained intelligence that some geth ships have been electronically observed near the system."

 _"Sounds like we should check the place out,"_ Garrus noted.

"Kindly keep it low key. With current events, the last thing we need is more instability because of your tendency for collateral damage and chaos."

 _"You lost me. What do you mean by 'current events'?"_

"I take it then that you haven't heard about the destruction of the Free Batarian Federation world of Adogene."

 _"Destruction? Someone destroyed a planet?"_

"As of yet, we only have eyewitness accounts to go on," Sparatus answered. "But it seems that a ship traveling at FTL speeds slammed into the planet. We can't figure out who did it because there was no registration signal, and after impact, volcanic activity has made it impossible to even find the remains."

 _"Hold on a minute. 'Eyewitness accounts' of a ship traveling at FTL?"_

"That is somewhat misleading," Valern admitted. "In reality, they saw the image of where the ship was after it had already passed. Preliminary estimations show that the ship was traveling far slower than conventional FTL. It was also aiming itself. Presumably, it slowed down for two reasons: first of all, to correct for the orbital movement of the planet, and the second reason was likely to prevent complete penetration through the tectonic plates."

 _"Respectfully sir, I think you're reaching on that one,"_ Nihlus interjected.

"Simple logic, Kryik. Of all the vectors in space to choose from, a ship traveling between systems just happens to intercept a planet? With the drive safeties overridden or sabotaged? Such an unlikely scenario implies intent and planning."

 _"Alright, I'll bite that. But who would have motive?"_

"A report from a late STG informant indicated that some notable members of the Hegemony Remnant were seen on the planet shortly before its destruction," Tevos replied tentatively.

 _"I know the Alliance has every reason to want those guys dead, but a planet as collateral damage seems like overkill even for them,"_ Garrus objected. _"And I'm the guy who says there's no such thing."_

"Be that as it may," Sparatus cautioned. "we can't dismiss any possibilities simply based on what a course of action _may seem_."

 _"Maybe the Remnant did this as a false flag operation?"_ Kryik suggested. _"Last I heard, the Batarian Federation was having problems with die-hards calling them sellouts and traitors to the Hegemony. So the Remnant points a finger at the Alliance and stirs up a heap of trouble."_

"Oddly enough, that's exactly the same rumor that's been making rounds on the Extranet," Valern pointed out. "I wouldn't put stock in any theories however, not until we can really determine what happened."

"That's only if we can," Sparatus cut in. "A ship slamming into a planet with that kind of force would be completely obliterated. Any travel records Adogene had were lost in the destruction."

"Time will tell," Tevos said resignedly. "Spectre Kryik, thank you for the information. Spectre Vakarian, you have a new lead to pursue with the Alliance. I suggest you get to it."

 _"Right away ma'am."_

 **The Normandy**

Shepard stared at the krogan who had taken up semi-permanent residence in the loading bay. "Really, Wrex?"

"I am NOT being left behind again," the old mercenary growled. "It's boring enough as it is here. I'm going down on the next one so I can get to kill something. Not really picky on that score, either."

The commander shook her head. "Fine by me. Just don't mess with anything here until we get to our next stop."

She turned and headed for the elevator, and was surprised to find the asari waiting in it. "Commander! I…I came to offer my assistance with your visions from the beacon."

"What kind of assistance," Shepard asked warily.

"Well…you are no doubt familiar with how we asari can meld with other individuals?" Liara stated with a slight darkening of her cheeks.

"I've heard about it in passing. Wouldn't say that I'm familiar with it."

"Melding involves joining our nervous system with a partner," Shepard noted with amusement that the doctor seemed quite flustered with the word 'partner.' "We can share memories. If you'd allow me to meld with you, I could-"

"Appreciate the offer, but no, Dr. T'Soni," Shepard cut her off. "Not to say that I don't think you mean well, but I can't let you go picking through my memories."

"Commander, I promise that I will respect your privacy! Please just let me help. I want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do."

"It's not even my choice, Liara," Shepard answered. "I'm not like most humans. I have no idea what would happen to either of us if I let you try it. Besides, there's parts of my life that you should never see." And with that, the elevator door opened. Shepard stepped off onto the bridge leaving a flummoxed asari standing inside.

"Shepard," Garrus called. "just finished talking with the Council. Nihlus and Anderson got another lead for us to run down."

"Hit me."

"A planet called Noveria. It's on the border of Salarian space. It's something of a corporate space for rent. A company named Binary Helix is currently operating there. Saren and Benezia both invested quite a few credits in the company, and the Council says that STG detected geth traffic nearby."

"Good enough for me. Did you tell Joker?"

"He said he isn't moving this bucket until you give him the go-ahead."

"Joker, set course for Noveria. Double time it."

 _"Got it ma'am. Let's hope this is less exciting than Therum."_

 **Unknown location**

"So the Council is sending Vakarian and the Alliance team to Noveria?"

"Yes, Arterius-commander."

"Well isn't that interesting…" Saren smiled, tapping a talon against his chin in thought. "Benezia is going to Noveria to check on the progress of the project there. Alert her, and let her know to eliminate them once they arrive.

"Yes, Arterius-commander."

 **Noveria**

"Unidentified craft, this is Noveria Traffic Control. You are in restricted space. State your purpose or turn around and leave."

 _"This is Spectre Garrus Vakarian aboard the Systems Alliance Normandy. We are here on official business. You will clear us to send down a landing party. If not, the commander of this ship will clear it with orbital fire. So I suggest you make that clear to your superiors."_

The traffic controller blinked. "Confirm last transmission. You are aboard a Systems Alliance vessel?"

 _"Yeah. An Alliance ship with a very pissed off Butcher of Torfan. Again, clear us to land before she loses her patience and does it herself, because that will not end well for anyone here."_

"U-understood," the controller stammered, reaching for a second communications line with a suddenly-sweaty hand. "Please standby."

 **Noveria, Port Hashan**

"Is this the punchline to some kind of bad joke?" Administrator Anoleis asked as he eyed the strange entourage that exited the Alliance dropship.

Garrus looked back at the heavily armed group. Three humans, a quarian, a hulking krogan and an asari. "Unfortunately, no."

"I see," the salarian's gaze lingered on the leading human female before continuing. "In the interest of safety, all visitors are required to surrender their weapons-"

"Not happening," the human woman bit out with a fierce glare.

"They're here on my authority," Garrus stated. "as a Council Spectre. Take it up with them. In the meantime, we're here to investigate Binary Helix."

"Preposterous!" Anoleis raised his voice. "You show up unannounced, with enough arms to outfit a small nation, and you're going to interfere with the dealings of one of our biggest customers?"

"Your _biggest customer_ is quite possibly involved in a recent attack on Alliance Territory," Garrus returned evenly. "Specifically, an attack on an Alliance military stronghold. Your _biggest customer_ can only destroy your contract. The Alliance can destroy your planet. Might want to think about who you really can afford to piss off."

"Are you threatening me, mister Vakarian?"

"That's Spectre Vakarian to you, and no. I'm just telling you what is probably going to happen if we lose the lead we're chasing here. Saren Arterius is a primary investor in Binary Helix. Yeah, you heard that right. We're after Desolas's little brother. He just turned traitor and attacked the Alliance. If you get in the way, you'll be on the hook for aiding a traitor to the Council and a war criminal against the Alliance. The Council might not do much to you, but the Alliance? Well ask the Hegemony how it worked out."

"There's no need for threats," Anoleis backtracked, seeing exactly what he was about to get into. "Perhaps we can negotiate about this."

"Then how about this?" Shepard growled. "You stay the fuck out of our way, we find what we're after, we get out, and you never hear from us again. Or you harp on about corporate policy, we laugh at you, and do it anyway. A couple rent-a-cops aren't going to stop us if this gets ugly."

The "rent-a-cops" in question stiffened indignantly before eyeing the krogan and the heavily armored fellow humans.

"I don't suppose a peaceful resolution is out of the question?" the administrator trailed off weakly.

"If you don't start anything, we won't," Garrus replied. "Now if you could please just tell us where Binary Helix is stationed at, we'll get out of your way. If Binary Helix has nothing to do with Saren's attack, we leave everything how it was when we came. If not, well…those guns they're carrying aren't for show."

Anoleis sighed. No doubt he would catch hell and the Union wouldn't be particularly happy to deal with this, but the turian was a Spectre. There wasn't much he, a bureaucratic paper-pusher, could do to stop a heavily armed Spectre or the ludicrously well-armed entourage behind him. "Binary Helix is currently renting out our facilities at Peak 15. Please don't cause too much damage."

"Anything we should know about up there?"

"All I can tell you is that our last contact with the facilities was two hours ago. Our security personnel up there reported that one of Binary Helix's principal investors arrived to check on something. The only reason they informed us is because of the Council's latest lockdown on unauthorized travel."

Garrus frowned. "Did they say who it was?"

"Only that it was an asari who was listed on their personnel roster. We didn't press further. Client confidentiality."

"Sounds like Benezia's doing something here," Shepard growled. "Perfect timing."

"Alright, administrator. I'd like the coordinates of the facility and clearance for the ship behind me to fly us there."

Anoleis activated his omnitool. "Gianna, could you please fetch me the coordinates for Peak 15 Access, and notify the defense network that the Alliance shuttle is authorized for transit to the facility?"

 **Noveria, Peak 15**

"Seems awfully quiet," Shepard noted as the garage door cut off their exposure to the cold behind them. "You'd think there would be a welcoming party."

"Yeah, something's off," Garrus agreed. To his right, Wrex shifted. "What's up, big guy?"

"There's an old smell," the mercenary growled, eyes flashing around warily. "Can't quite place it, but I know I've smelt it before."

Alenko shivered. His senses were screaming at him. An odd sensation permeated the garage, and seemed to intensify near the rear entrance. He shook it off, and leveled his weapon cautiously. "Tali, anything on your geth tracker?"

"No signals nearby," the quarian answered. "If there are any geth, they aren't-"

Shepard suddenly whirled and fired at something to the right, on the level above. A crackling of static echoed and a cloaked geth materialized, its head exploding from the laser shot. However, three more geth decloaked and fired rockets.

"Ambush!" Ashley snarled, diving forward to avoid the blast.

"Hngh!" Liara grunted as she extended her hands and generated a large biotic barrier that shoved the rockets away to detonate harmlessly against the walls.

"Commander!" Tali called in panic as Shepard leapt over the rail and rammed her fist through a third geth's core processor. "The tracker shows a unit approaching the entrance!"

Garrus shot the fourth and last ambusher before keying his laser shot. Estimating where the geth would stand, he fired through the door at approximately head height. "Not anymore! What do you say we blow the door and-"

The door exploded inward, slamming into Liara's barrier. The asari's vision flashed white and pain jolted through her spine from the eezo nodules embedded in her body as her biotics struggled to maintain integrity. Kaiden steadied the doctor, then looked at the doorway which held an ominously yellow glow.

"Get out of the way!" Wrex bowled over the two, dragging them out of the stream of yellow that speared through the garage door in a protective bear hug.

Shepard stared as the smoke from the doorway cleared, revealing a large mech that stomped through and swiveled to face her. The mech had a smoking hole roughly where a pilot's chest would be. The machine raised its right arm, which she noticed appeared to be a mass effect minigun, and a torrent of rounds flew toward her, or rather where she had been.

Shepard dived over the railing, ripping it out as she went. Then she waited for the mech to turn and face her team before jumping back up and ramming the piece of metal through the right shoulder actuator. The mech staggered back, trying to compensate as Shepard hauled herself over the top, found some leverage, and punched the left shoulder so hard that the joint simply disintegrated. Meanwhile, Garrus reoriented himself, selected an armor piercing configuration, and fired several times, punching through the chest plate and shredding the Element Zero generator pack mounted on the back. Shepard leapt clear as the mech toppled forward, slamming into the floor below the entranceway level.

"What the hell was that?" Alenko wondered as he extricated himself from Wrex's grip.

"That was a Hierarchy exoskeleton!" Garrus commented in disbelief. "What's a war machine doing here?"

"Stupid question," Wrex answered. "A better one is 'how many more does Saren have here?'"

"As many as he wants," Shepard retorted. "I'd like to know what was controlling this thing, since Garrus didn't kill a pilot. Tali?"

With trepidation, Tali scooted over to the mech and examined the unit. "It was receiving signals from an external communication source. There's a processor panel that someone welded onto the back that interprets the signal and feeds commands to the rest of the suit's mechanisms."

"A remote controlled heavy unit, like the YMIRs that Hanhe-Kedar produces for corporate security, but more maneuverable, better armed and armored," Garrus breathed. "Those geth are pretty clever. Saren definitely couldn't come up with this on his own."

"Those geth we dealt with evaded Tali's locator program," Liara added.

"They weren't broadcasting, and they acted more like living soldiers," Tali replied. "They also had more geth runtimes embedded in them."

"What does that mean?"

Tali shivered. "It means the geth are more intelligent and independent of each other, and I can't track them."

"You detected the big one before it came in here," Kaidan pointed out.

"It was using a known frequency and there's no way to hide something like this," Shepard answered, thumping the fallen unit for good measure. "They knew how we dealt with them on Therum, so they've adapted."

"The worst part is that my locator program is now useless," Tali lamented. "If the geth figured out how to get around it, they also know how to turn it around. I was using a false identity to access their network. If my program is running, they can track us by watching where my fake credentials are located."

"So we do it the old fashioned way," Wrex grinned. "Fine by me."

 **Of all the Mass Effect Races, the geth will be the most difficult for the Alliance to deal with.  
**

 **The geth have little cultural baggage and know only one real law when it comes to war: kill or be killed. They have no problems doing extreme things to themselves, as exemplified in ME3 with the Reaper signal booster, to ensure success. Here the geth adapted after a single encounter to deal with Tali's tactics. They also adapted the turian exoskeleton to suit their tactics. And this is just some of what they've done. In the next chapters, you'll see more specialized geth units. No, I won't go by what Bioware had them do and build bigger and tougher "node platforms" like the geth Primes and Juggernauts. Honestly, Bioware took autonomous AI that are not constrained to a single form...and constrained them to a single form. No, the geth are far smarter than what ME let them be.**

 **A couple reviewers called me out because Kai Leng's planetary assassination shouldn't have worked by Bioware's Mass Effect physics. To that, I say this: Bioware doesn't even stick to their own science. The ME2 intro showed the Normandy exiting FTL nose forward instead of backward like ships are supposed to in the Codex. FTL travel involves acceleration over half the trip, then a thruster rotation, and deceleration over the other half. I could have used the physics they made up and didn't use, but I figured it's more interesting this way. And as for the Mass Effect envelop on the Norak? It was sustained until the ship disintegrated.**

 **Can you guess what other kind of weapon the exoskeleton mounted? Hint: the new Citadel dreads mount this as their main guns. So did the Collector Cruiser.**

 **On a side note, I am psyched for the Fallen Empire expansion for SWTOR. Can't wait to see what new storyline Bioware wants to weave. Granted, their technical research needs work, but they can still tell a good story.**


	13. Commando vs Commandoes

**And now, the continuation of Noveria. The scene at the end is what makes this mission. Trust me.**

Chapter Twelve

 **Noveria, Peak 15**

"EEH! SPIDERS!" Tali shrieked as she rapid-fired her shotgun until the weapon overheated.

"Rargh! Just like old times!" Wrex laughed as he ripped the tendrils off an unfortunate insect.

"Yah!" Liara squeaked as she narrowly dodged a splash of acid, her hands shaking far too much for her to aim properly.

Garrus and the Alliance soldiers opted to silently gun down the enemy and finished clearing the room in seconds. As viscera and ichor ran over the floor, the team took a moment to enjoy the silence.

"What are these things?" Kaidan asked, eyeing the fallen insects.

"Rachni," Wrex, Garrus and Liara answered simultaneously, before looking at each other. "I knew I recognized the smell," Wrex continued. "Looks like Saren's dabbling with them. Can't say why though."

"Interesting biology," Shepard commented. "Can anyone explain how these things can shoot highly corrosive acid?" She indicated a partially melted overturned desk.

"If I remember correctly," Liara replied hesitantly. "they produce acid in specialized glands for pre-digestive purposes. I don't remember anything about them being able to spit long distance."

"The salarians didn't believe us when we told them about their soldiers," Wrex noted. "They said it sounded like something out of a really bad sci-fi vid." The krogan laughed. "Then I brought back a dead one and threw it at their head scientist and asked him if he still thought I was being funny. Couldn't hear the little pyjack under the thing."

"The rachni were supposed to be extinct though. Where did Saren find them?" Garrus wondered.

"Might be something on the network here," Shepard suggested.

"No good," Tali replied, tapping her omnitool. "Somebody shut down the network servers, along with main power. If we want to know what is on these computers, we'll have to get the station back up and running."

"Hmph. Well wherever Saren found the rachni, it doesn't matter. They're not our priority. Benezia is."

"Say what?" Garrus cried. "Shepard, you and your Alliance have to have read our history, including our war with them. The rachni are incredibly dangerous! We have to deal with them too. If they escape the facility, who knows what will happen."

"Never said we wouldn't clear out the place first. I'm not stupid, Vakarian. I'm not leaving a bunch of bugs to crawl up behind us while we're fighting Benezia and the geth."

"Shepard," Liara spoke up. "if I know bio-labs, this facility should have a sterilization safeguard. If we find it, we should be able to purge the facility of the rachni once we get power back on."

"Not before we secure Benezia," the commando replied, pulling out a small device and passing it over the dead rachni. "Normandy, this is Shepard. Sending a genetic profile of a new enemy called the Rachni. Relay it to command."

 _"Copy that commander."_

" 'Genetic profile?' " Garrus parroted.

"Standard procedure when we encounter a new enemy," Shepard clarified. "Obtain bio-samples, send them back for analysis and create countermeasures for it, or at least figure out what it can do. Won't mean shit for this mission, but the next time we run into the Rachni, command will have tactics against them for us."

"All that from a genetic scan? I know the Alliance runs circles around us when it comes to genetic research, but that's a bit more than I can buy from you."

"And combat footage. And AARs." Shepard rolled her eyes before noticing how Kaidan had been unusually quiet and was cradling his head. "Something wrong, Lieutenant?"

Kaidan willed away the pounding in his head. "Nothing I can't handle, ma'am," he assured her. From the look in the commander's eyes, it was clear she wasn't buying that.

"Headache? A noise you can't really place?" she asked in a low voice.

"Yes ma'am," he admitted, wincing.

Shepard nodded. "We'll have to talk to the doctor after the mission. For now, just try and block it out as best as you can. We don't have time to teach you the basics of psionic ability."

"Yes ma'am."

"Alright everyone," Shepard called. "No point waiting here. We'll have to use the tram to reach the facility. Keep your heads on a swivel. We're going in."

"Uh, not happening right now," Garrus countered. "We're not taking the tram anywhere until we get the generators back online."

"Fine. Williams, go with the Spectre and the Quarian. See if you can get them back up."

"Remember when I said I technically don't take orders from you?" Garrus called as they headed toward the elevator.

"Remember when you refused to take orders from me?" Shepard pointed out.

"Touché."

 **Tartarus**

"They really haven't begun moving against the Perseus Veil?"

 _"No, director,"_ Udina replied. _"Apparently the machinations of your people and the Navy have stretched their forces across too wide an area for there to be much of a reserve left to challenge the geth hiding in the Veil."_

Harper steeped his fingers. "That is unexpected," he mused. "I'd hoped to observe their newest forces in action and use them as a cat's paw against the geth, but it seems that must be put on hold."

 _"The people you sent over did uncover some covert orders to the STG to increase surveillance around the veil though,"_ Anderson chimed in. _"It could be that they're waiting to confirm their presence before mobilizing. The geth have had three hundred years to establish themselves somewhere. Who's to say that they actually are still behind the Veil? That's not exactly the smartest choice."_

"Do not forget that the geth are an inorganic enemy, Captain," Harper chastised. "They are not similarly minded. Their requirements are different. And their priorities are considerably more alien than actual alien races. It is very much a possibility that they have remained near the Quarian homeworld of Rannoch and buttressed the system against attack. Perhaps they realize what a good bargaining chip it would make, since the quarians have proven unable to adapt to live anywhere else."

 _"You know, that's something I don't understand,"_ Anderson noted. _"Why are the quarians still unable to live outside their suits? From what we know of the Genophage, the salarians at least have the capacity to manufacture a sterility virus. Is it really that hard to boost their immune system?"_

 _"As a matter of fact, it is, Captain."_ A new screen opened up and a woman with an oddly mixed accent of French and German chimed in. _"The quarian immune system is meant to be primarily symbiotic. Like most life forms, they were not meant to move outside their home planet's ecosystem. Unlike the majority of the races within the Council however, their attempts to do so mean their biology becomes cut-off from other essentials. The symbiotes they rely on in their environment can't sustain themselves in an isolated area such as a spaceship, which by necessity must be sterile. And before you ask, no, the salarians cannot simply manufacture or synthesize those necessary symbiotes because it would not solve the problem. To put it plainly, quarian biology never evolved a proper immune system. The salarians would need to artificially accelerate the evolution of a species, which is several orders of magnitude beyond a sterility virus. Even with Meld, we are not capable of that yet."_

"I take it then that you have finished reviewing the data the quarian Admiralty Board sent us, Doctor Vahlen?" Harper addressed the woman.

 _"Yes. Regrettably, a cure for the quarian condition such as they seek would take nearly a decade of work on our part. Though if Rannoch could be reclaimed, we could manage it in considerably less time."_

 _"Wait, Doctor Vahlen from X-COM?"_ Anderson asked in surprised. _"She's still alive?"_

"You know that life-extension technology has been a cornerstone of our civilization, Captain," Harper answered. "Who else but humanity's brightest mind in biological science would be behind it?"

"Jack," Dr. Core entered the room. "we finished looking at the data-"

 _"I already informed him about that, Eva."_

Dr. Core scowled slightly. "You couldn't let me tell him?" she whined.

 _"You deserve it considering you never kept contact with me after I oversaw your thesis presentation. After all I went through for my brightest student…"_ Vahlen answered in a mock huff.

Dr. Core grumbled under her breath before addressing the director again. "The Cydonia Research Institute took a look at the quarian notes on the geth. According to them, it's the most schizophrenic way of producing an AI they've ever seen. Each combat platform, as they call their units, hosts a couple hundred small runtimes. Individually, they are stupid and incapable of all but the most simple tasks and calculations. Together, they are exponentially more capable. The closest analogue is how in our brains, nearly thirty percent of our neurons are misfiring at any given time. It's electrochemical chaos. But out of chaos, there is order. Even with thirty percent of our billions of neurons going off when they shouldn't, people aren't having seizures all the time."

 _"From my brief examination of the data,"_ Dr. Vahlen added. _"it appears that the geth make decisions through a process internally referred to as 'formulating a consensus.' Each runtime is apparently self-aware enough to consider a choice and vote on a decision. Honestly, it is fascinating."_

 _"Well that's all well and good,"_ Anderson cut in. _"but how does it apply to us?"_

 _"I think I see an advantage,"_ Udina spoke up, surprising everyone. _"In any democracy, hell, any government has dissent. The geth were used to isolation from the galaxy beforehand. The ones we've seen ally with Saren Arterius, that's a big decision with a lot of ramifications and consequences. What about the geth that dissented? Are we really seeing all the geth, or are there others out there who decided not to follow Saren in his crazy revenge scheme?"_

 _"If there are, then the geth are divided…"_ Anderson mused.

"Which would make for an interesting situation to exploit." Dr. Core finished. "Divide and conquer. The geth are at least reasonable by some standard. Saren convinced at least some of them to follow him. If there is another group, we could try and pick them up as allies, or at least negotiate with them. Maybe they'd be willing to share some information with us."

"Only if we have something they might need," Harper reminded her. "Doctor Vahlen, what do you think about the Quarian request?"

 _"Helping the quarians would earn us some goodwill in the galaxy. Besides, in their current condition they hardly pose a threat to us. In fact, they're more of a danger to themselves, considering their obsession with reclaiming Rannoch. I'll present the full details to Marcus at the weekly briefing. If he approves of the project, I'll have my team leaders start working right away. But you will have to come up with a plan to help."_

"Reclaiming the quarian's home planet and developing an immunity treatment for them would buy us their loyalty and technical expertise in AI research. It would also deprive the Council races of their best ship mechanics should they become hostile towards us. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea," Harper admitted.

 _"Must you always think of everyone else as the enemy?"_ Udina asked in a long-suffering tone. _"Not everyone out there is hostile. They are helping us right now."_

"Out of their own self-interest," Harper reminded him. "You are paid to make friends with potential enemies, ambassador. I don't have the luxury of playing nice. When the safety of the Alliance is at risk, it is better to be paranoid and wrong than to be complacent and caught off guard."

 _"It is also better to have friends than enemies,"_ Udina fired back.

"You can always trust your enemies," Harper declared. "You know they will stand against you. But you can never trust your allies. You never know where they will stand behind you."

 **Noveria, Peak 15**

"I said I was sorry!" Garrus protested as Tali cold shouldered him out of the way while the team exited the tram.

"You got spider guts all over me you bosh'tet! And you nearly fried the core with that stupid pulse grenade shot! Why were you even using that when the Rachni are organic?"

"My finger slipped!"

"You'd think Spectres would have better fire discipline," Sheppard mused aloud. Wrex laughed uproariously, but didn't say anything.

Alenko blinked away the headache, which had gotten somewhat worse. And now he could hear slight whisperings. He tried to get a fix on where they were, but had little confidence in his efforts. "There's nobody here, ma'am. Shouldn't there be guards at the station?"

"You're right," Shepard frowned. "Take it slow and careful. Williams, stay here and guard the tram. This is the only way out. Make sure no one makes it before we do."

Williams nodded curtly and began taking out sticks of explosives and wiring them for booby trapping. The rest of the team moved down the hallway on the left. One elevator trip upward, and they entered a room with two figures.

"Who are you?" Garrus called as they entered, and the figures whirled around in surprise.

"Captain Ventra-" In unison, Shepard and Alenko fired at the two guards to the surprise of the team. Garrus and Liara's protests were stopped when the bodies flickered and faded, revealing two geth under holographic disguise.

"Couldn't smell anything from them," Shepard explained. "No organic scent. Not from them, at least." Before anyone could comment any further, two rachni soldiers dropped from the ceiling along with a platform with a nasty looking gatling gun mounted on top of a large ball.

Time slowed down for the supersoldier. She shot forward, ignoring the rachni and concentrating on the larger threat. The geth platform surged backward and then cut right while spinning up its gatling before unleashing a hellish barrage of fire that should have shredded the human woman. The keyword being "should have."

The geth runtimes expected that any kinetic barriers would have been depleted within the first point four seconds. But the hail inexplicably bent to the side of the woman or pinged harmlessly off her armor as she also changed direction and leapt for the turret. The platform instantly attempted to switch vectors once more, which proved to be the wrong move. Rather than lose her grip from the sudden jerk in acceleration, Shepard curled her biceps in, bringing her armored feet around to smash into the delicately calibrated sensor suite mounted on a collar around the pivot point of the turret. Now blind, the geth unit slammed into a wall, further jostling the commander who stubbornly clung to the arrangement. Shepard grabbed the mounting collar and quickly snatched her pistol before firing shot after shot into a box that sat behind the gun. The unit immediately stopped moving and collapsed forward.

Wrex raised his smoking shotgun from the massive hole in the dead rachni and whistled. "Nice one, Butcher."

Liara shakily allowed her biotic barrier to drop, while Tali stared at the large geth unit in consternation. "Keelah, what are the geth doing now?"

"Slowing us down," Shepard growled as she holstered her pistol.

"Not by much if you keep that up, commander," Garrus commented. "I'd really hate to take on that thing by myself though."

"Tali, this ambush thing is getting real old. See if you can access the facility cameras."

"Give me a moment." Tali powered up what looked like the main terminal and tapped away at her omnitool before shaking her head. "There is a high geth presence in the network. The best I can do is get you the layout of the facility without alerting them."

Garrus cocked his head. "Hey, what about the safeguard? Is there anything that can purge the whole facility?"

"There's a neutron purge security measure, but it's been rigged to go off if anyone tries to shut it off."

"That doesn't sound good," Wrex noted.

"Nobody's armed it yet, and it seems to take at least five minutes to power up, but it is accessible over the network, and the geth look like they are planning to set it off eventually."

"Wrex, can you and Tali get over to the neutron purge controls and manually shut them off?"

"Easy job. Don't die before I get back, Butcher."

"And then there were four," Garrus said as the two ran back to the elevator.

"There's one big room ma'am," Kaidan said, rubbing his temples as he spoke. "Think that's the place?"

"Might as well," Shepard agreed.

*break*

Benezia held back a smirk as she heard footsteps enter the room. The geth and commandos under her charge awaited her signal to attack. She'd let them fully ensconce themselves in the center before her forces closed it off.

There were two humans, she noted. And then that troublesome Spectre and an Asari trailing behind them. She frowned. Wait a moment. Was that…

"So you brought Liara with you," she called. "Good. That saves me the trouble of searching for her myself."

"M-mother?!" Liara whispered.

"Matriarch Benezia, in the flesh," Shepard hissed. "The Alliance has a score to settle with you and your friend Saren."

"It is a score you will find difficult to match, human," she sniffed dismissively.

"Try me," Shepard snarled.

"Councilor Tevos wants to know why you'd join up with Saren, Benezia," Garrus stated, carefully aiming his rifle away from any vital area. "You were one of the Republic's main voices for peace and cooperation. Why hook up with a warmonger like Saren?"

"You couldn't understand, Vakarian," Benezia replied. "Dark days are coming. Saren has shown me the light in Sovereign."

"Not much for religious talk, so I'll make this short," Shepard cut in. "You're coming with us."

Benezia laughed and snapped her fingers. A Hierarchy exoskeleton stomped up to the doorway, blocking the exit and flanked by two asari commandos in heavy helmets. Several geth clambered up onto the catwalks and Benezia began to glow slightly as she exercised her biotics. Two more commandos dropped down and flanked her.

"Have you ever faced an Asari Commando unit before?" she asked. "Few humans have…" she trailed off menacingly.

The doorframe above the exoskeleton and the two commandos exploded, wiping the three out. Garrus turned and fired another EMP pulse grenade into the room, taking out the unprepared geth units. Liara raised her biotic barrier to shield the team from incoming fire. Kaidan fired his rifle at the remaining geth, clipping a newly uncloaked asari commando.

And Shepard contemptuously plowed through a biotic attack towards the matriarch and punched one of the commandos through her armor, crushing the woman's ribcage in one blow and sending her flying against the wall. The other commando fired her shotgun uselessly before throwing it at her and unsheathing a nasty looking knife. Shepard simply grabbed her wrist and brought the knife harmlessly in a semicircle above her head before tightening her grip and whipping the unfortunate asari into a new group of geth that dropped down on the far side of the room. From the sound of it and how the first geth she hit fell apart on impact, that commando was as good as dead.

Benezia had leapt away to safety, putting some distance between herself and Shepard. She stared in trepidation at the human who turned to face her, skin and eyes beginning to glow purple.

 ** _"Have you ever faced an Alliance Predator Commando before?"_** Shepard growled, eyes narrowed with rage. **_"No asari has!"_**

 _Contact Report: Turian Exoskeleton_

 _Designed for heavy infantry combat, this unit possesses spectacularly powerful kinetic barriers to defend against a determined infantry assault. While heavy, the unit is surprisingly mobile on foot, allowing the operator to approach speeds of up to thirty kilometers per hour while carrying a moderate load of heavy weapons. The relatively small size of the unit allows the operator to engage in urban warfare unhindered where other armored units cannot._

 _The primary downsides of the exoskeleton is the large Element Zero signature and the limited power draw the back mounted generator can support. General Adrien Victus has noted that it's very much overspecialized towards urban combat. And while more mobile and maneuverable than a tank or an armored fighting vehicle, it is still a foot unit and can be bogged down more in rough terrain than a wheeled, tracked, or floating vehicle would._

 _Contact Report: Geth Baller_

 _This appears to be a recent concept of a combat platform. The "Baller," as referred to by Commander Erin Shepard, appears to be intended as an anti-infantry harassment unit. The ball from which the unit derives its nickname allows for rapid change of direction and balances the gun and sensor platform while moving. The unit lacks heavy armor apart from the ball itself, which can take considerable abuse from infantry weapons._

 _The unit typically tries to maintain distance between itself and infantry while spitting a large volume of fire to keep them down. The unit is vulnerable to air units or inside confined areas._

 **And so the first of the new geth designs shows up.**

 **Everybody say hi to Dr. Vahlen again!**

 **I will be slowing down the updates more for the next month and a half because life is belting me upside the head right now. I have to fill out paperwork for leave, study for certification testing and beat the heat where I'm currently stationed. It sucks.**

 **Oh, and I also have to hammer out an outline of how I want the plot to go after I finish the ME1 part. Bear with me please.**

 **Review!**


	14. Hints of the past

**The end of the Noveria Mission. Unlike in the games, I made Benezia a genuine badass instead of a static biotic turret spamming spells.  
**

 **Enjoy!**

Chapter Thirteen

 **Noveria, Peak 15**

Pandemonium reigned. Liara's biotic pulse waves cleared the walkways of geth at unpredictable intervals, sending the combat platforms flying into the air. Kaidan and Garrus dragged her over to the far end, limiting the approach vectors, and then using their cover to set up a firing position that allowed them to eliminate the geth that magnetized themselves to the grates with impunity. The geth platforms that fell back on the walkways attempted to rise only to be pierced with deadly accurate counterfire.

From the wrecked doorway however, a third turian exoskeleton rushed forward at high speed, carrying a large piece of metal in front as a battering ram, intent on crushing the three against the wall.

Garrus swore, preparing a modified pulse grenade shot while Liara's eyes narrowed. She focused on the walkway directly in front, and reached out with her biotics. The grate suddenly shot up, turning the walkway into a ramp that the rapidly moving hijacked exoskeleton cleared before the geth controlling it could stop it. As it smashed itself into a nearby wall, Garrus fired. The modified pulse grenade pierced the exoskeleton's armor and detonated inside, completely frying every system and overloading the mass effect generator on the back. Hardwired safety systems reacted, disabling its power feed and preventing the generator from going supercritical.

"Good thing they don't self-destruct!" Kaidan called as he lobbed a grenade into the hole in the walkway before cringing as white-hot light erupted from down below. An acrid smell trailed up, letting all present know that the geth units that had been climbing up had been all but immolated.

"Please don't give the geth ideas…" Garrus replied as he butt-stroked a freshly uncloaked commando who'd leapt behind their position.

Liara took her attention away from the battle and directed it at the stunned woman on the floor. "Why are you doing this?!" she shrieked. "Why is mother siding with Saren?"

The asari commando's eyes cleared just as Garrus aimed his rifle at her face. "…it is the will of Sovereign…" she answered distantly before her face exploded in a rain of blue blood, tissue and cartilage.

Liara flinched, involuntarily jerking her biotics so that the grate she ripped from the walkway slammed down across what was left of the ruined doorway.

Meanwhile, Shepard had been contemptuously brute forcing her way through Benezia's guard and completely ignoring the woman's biotic attacks. Two commandos fired waves in unison while a third fired with a mass effect sniper rifle. The waves of biotic force unified into a roaring pulse that threatened to overwhelm the commando until it mysteriously parted around her and tore apart the catwalk railing behind her. The rifle shot slammed into the left pauldron of Shepard's armor, doing nothing to slow her down as she grabbed a commando's gun and twisted it sideways so that the gun fired into her comrade. The gunfire distracted the other enough to let Shepard fire off an uppercut that sent the unfortunate woman sailing into the ceiling, forming a crater around the woman's broken body. The second commando recovered from flinching enough to clap her hands together, creating an omnidirectional wave of biotic energy that propelled her and the Alliance supersoldier in opposite directions.

Or it should have. Shepard's left arm lashed out and grabbed the woman's right, resulting in the asari's own attack ripping her arm off. Once again, the wave of energy parted around the woman like a curtain, leaving Shepard unmoved against her will.

Benezia watched in horror as Shepard quickly pulled out her laser carbine and fired one-handed at the asari sniper, nonchalantly ignoring the second shot and slagging the faceplate. The unfortunate asari screamed in agony, dropped her rifle and clawed at her face, which was now encased in a much more form-fitting alloy mass than before. Shepard switched her aim to the crippled commando in front of her and burned a hole through her torso. Meanwhile, the sniper dropped to her knees, blindly and uselessly clutching at her throat while still red-hot material oozed downward, before crumpling on her side. As Shepard caught her breath, the body twitched in the final throws of asphyxia before becoming still.

"Looks like your guards don't cut it, Benezia," Shepard called up, mockingly extending the severed limb. "Need a hand?"

Benezia's horror coalesced into fury. Kaidan suddenly staggered as he psionically heard a single raging scream in his head, far different from the voices before.

"Saren really was right about you humans," Benezia spat. "You _are_ the monsters of the galaxy."

"The worst," Shepard shot back, glowing purple eyes narrowed in determination. "And if Saren thinks he's going to wipe us out, he's got another think coming."

Garrus abruptly felt a chill run down his back. Something was about to go down, and he didn't think Shepard taunting the thousand-year-old biotic witch was helping.

"I _think_ that I've tolerated your impudence **LONG ENOUGH!** " Benezia declared as her hands erupted in barely-controlled biotic energy, which swirled up her arms. Her black dress began burning away, revealing much more practical wear in the form of thin cloth armor. The asari levitated off the walkway and curled up as the biotic energy intensified. The room began to shake as pulsing waves of biotic energy emanated from the angry asari.

"MOVE!" Garrus yelled as he yanked both Kaidan and Liara to their feet and pushed them out of the corner just as a metal plate from the ceiling detached above them. The plate plummeted down, crashing through the walkway and folding it up like clam.

"YAAH!" Liara screamed as she and Garrus tumbled down into the room below. Kaidan scrambled forward, clawing his way back onto the catwalk before Benezia convulsed and straightened herself out, unleashing a massive wave that picked him up and slammed him against the grate in the doorway.

"Nnngh!" Shepard braced herself, forearms crossed in front of herself as the wave billowed over her. As the light faded, she was about to lower her arms when a jarring impact sent her sideways to land spine first on the console Benezia had been messing with in the beginning.

Instinctively, she grasped the console and leveraged her feet up and lashed out, kicking the matriarch out of her lunge. Benezia rebounded off the far wall in such a way that she rolled down to land feet first on the catwalk, leaving behind a large dent in the wall. As Shepard pushed off the console, she noted that Benezia should have been lying flat on the floor with a crushed ribcage, in complete contrast to her guarded position at the moment.

" **It's time I ended your worthless existence,** " Benezia whispered as biotic lightning crackled around her fingers.

Shepard curled her own fingers into fists as she surrounded herself in a subdued purple glow. She slowly shifted her foot backward, sinking into a ready stance. " ** _My thoughts exactly!_** "

 **Citadel, Council Chambers**

Tevos found herself pacing anxiously as Valern approached her and Sparatus.

"Credit for your thoughts, Tevos?"

"Just thinking about Matriarch Benezia," she replied, eyes locked on something in the distance only she could see. "I remember sitting in her lectures as she told us all about the will of the Goddess Athame, the need to be open and respectful of other races, and how we can all learn and build a brighter future with one another. She was my idol. I went into politics because I wanted to live up to her ideals. And now we find out she's joined with Saren on some revenge plot against the Alliance. Why?"

"Motivation is usually something we only learn in the aftermath," Sparatus noted. "And we aren't there yet."

"We also may never know why she turned against her ideals," Valern added. "The enemy is always rational by their standards, but not necessarily by yours. You can try to comprehend her actions, but only by understanding her mindset. And given how far she's fallen from those ideals she used to espouse, you may wish to be ignorant of that."

Tevos threw up her hands. "It's just…argh! It doesn't feel right! Maybe Saren is controlling her somehow! The Benezia I knew as a maiden would never do this!"

"Benezia is hardly weak enough for a Batarian Slave Implant to affect her," Sparatus noted dryly, ignoring Tevos's angry glare. "and I doubt even the Alliance has mastered mind control techniques to the point of dramatically changing someone's personality."

"There's no point in speculation until Spectre Vakarian reports in from Noveria," Valern cautioned warningly. "We will find the truth, one way or another."

Tevos sighed. "I hope so," she whispered.

Sparatus coughed. "Well I'm sure you didn't call us here to play the shrink. What's happened?"

"A scout group of STG operatives has tracked geth sightings to the planet Virmire," Valern revealed. "In the interest of remaining undetected, they've pulled back and reported in. When the geth ships in orbit leave the system, they'll move in to investigate."

"Should we send someone with them who knows what to look for?" Tevos asked.

"I've taken the liberty of briefing one of our agents and sending them off already," the salarian councilor replied.

 **Unknown location**

The asari laid back in her seat, scanning the briefing file and idly wondering what awaited her on arrival. She glanced at the clock on the console. Twenty hours left to kill. She got up and stretched in the confines of her ship. Might as well limber up. No telling what she'd be dealing with later.

 **Citadel, Council Chambers**

"Also, the Hypathian Institute of Prothean Studies has lost contact with one of its research outposts on Feros. I wouldn't have considered it interesting except…"

"Dr. T'Soni is under contract with them," Sparatus finished.

"Precisely." Valern continued. "Any lead, no matter how thin, is something that can keep the Alliance pacified. Also the Hypathian Institute's chairwoman told me that they'd recently come across something very interesting that led them to call in a contract with an Alliance company, ExoGeni, to study new life forms. They chose the Alliance company because they wanted the best expertise."

"But that's not enough to send Vakarian and the Normandy over there to investigate," Tevos objected. "There's no connection to Saren."

"Not until very recently. Our best technical experts examined traffic records through the relay network recently, and they've found a number of unknown ships with a distinct similarity to the geth cruiser the Normandy destroyed above Therum. Guess which direction those unknowns appeared to be heading through the network."

"I see," Sparatus commented. "Then I assume we'll be sending the Normandy that way once they finish with Noveria?"

"Yes. I intend to give the STG more time to investigate Virmire. If Saren is doing something there, I want them to be able to catalogue the place without Alliance interference."

"Sounds like a plan."

 **Noveria, Peak 15**

Shepard leapt away from the blast of biotic lightning as the chaotic stream of energy warped and curled the metal walkway in interesting and lethal ways. Using her enhanced leg musculature, she found purchase against the wall and shot forward at the biotic only to bounce off a blue dome similar to what Liara used.

Benezia turned and heaved another bolt of lightning at the commander, whose eyes flared purple as she brought up her right forearm. Inexplicably, the lightning shattered six inches away, dispersing off to the side. Benezia's eyes narrowed. It seemed ranged attacks as a whole were useless against the commander.

Shepard snagged a twisted section of railing and effortlessly straightened it out before twirling it experimentally. Then she bounded forward, thrusting the shaft like a sword. Benezia swatted it off to the left, which Shepard turned into a sideways slash that threatened to cut the asari in half.

Benezia swiftly brought up her own right arm and flared her biotics. The metal rail audibly rebounded off of a bluish cloud, air molecules crushed together by her own mass effect fields to form a solid shield, before Shepard grabbed the far end of the pole and aimed the "hilt" at Benezia's head. Benezia reacted by imbuing her fist with a biotic shockwave, forming another "pad" of solid air in front, and punched Shepard right in the ribs.

Shepard flew sideways into the wall, shattering the panel and embedding herself in it. She pulled herself out and thrust out her psionic shield just as Benezia used both her hands to fire another stream of biotic lightning. The energy was deflected away from Shepard's hands and into the walls, shredding even more metal and destroying the Alliance supersoldier's footing. As she dropped to the severely damaged catwalk, she noted Benezia was breathing heavily. The biotics were beginning to take a toll on her.

" **Why won't you die?!** "

Shepard spat to the side, noting the bloody tint. " **You're not strong enough to kill me!** "

Kaidan had been jarred back to consciousness by the commander's impact with the wall. He raised his pounding head and looked up just in time to see Benezia ready another attack. "Commander!" he shouted, and some instinct drove him to reach out with his mind.

Benezia suddenly staggered, her biotic attack fizzling out, and she clutched at her head. " **AAU** GH!"

Shepard jerked in surprise, before looking over at Kaidan, who'd had his arm out. She could faintly feel the signature of a psi-bolt in the air.

The asari dropped to one knee, her left hand holding her temple and her right steadying herself on the catwalk. She raised her head, and Shepard could see her eyes flashing blue, black and white in a random sequence. "LE **T GO** OF ME!"

The woman seemed to be fighting with herself. Shepard stood poised to move while Benezia's spasms slowly died down. Then the asari looked up at her. "…I…I'm free…" she managed to whisper before collapsing onto her back.

Shepard tentatively moved forward. "Matriarch Benezia?"

Benezia looked at her as if for the first time. "…you're…after…Saren?" she asked slowly.

"Yes," Shepard answered, bewildered.

"…It's not…Saren…you should fear…ngh!" The asari convulsed again before focusing once more, a trickle of blood coming from her nose. "…beware…Sovereign…his Reaper…"

"Is that his dreadnought?" Shepard questioned.

"…not a ship…" she gasped. "…Reaper…Saren…controlled by it…controlled me…couldn't…couldn't fight…"

"What do you mean 'controlled?' "

"…the voices…Sovereign…it spoke…my head…trapped in my mind…couldn't stop...stop him…"

Shepard was becoming more and more uneasy by the second. What Benezia was saying made it sound like Saren was just a pawn. And if he was controlled by this…Reaper, what did it want?

"…must…must ngh!" Benezia shook her head and glared at Shepard with the eyes of an enemy. "You won't win!" she hissed as she readied a point blank biotic attack. Shepard was preparing a shield when Benezia suddenly jerked, the attack flying harmlessly to the side. Her eyes turned pale white and she froze.

Kaidan was standing against the grate, one arm hugging his side, the other outstretched. "…had to stop her ma'am…" he said with effort.

"Drop it, Kaidan."

The lieutenant obliged. Benezia's body dropped to the floor, unmoving except for the rise and fall of her chest.

"Spirits above!" Garrus's voice echoed through the room. The Alliance officers turned to look at him as he pulled himself up onto the catwalks by the collapsed grating. "You did a real number on the place, Shepard."

"Benezia helped with that," She retorted.

"Well speaking of her, I assume that since you're alive, she's at least incapacitated?"

Shepard eyed the prone body. "More or less."

Liara scrambled up and raced over. "M-mother!" she whispered in horror.

"She didn't really leave me much of a choice, Liara," Shepard told her.

Liara didn't answer. She knelt down and cradled her mother's head before breaking into tears.

"I know this isn't going to go over well," Garrus said as he walked up, eyeing the grieving woman. "but we still need to know what she was doing with the Rachni in this place."

 _"The old one sought our sight,"_ a rumbling voice echoed from above. Garrus and Shepard looked up to see the asari she'd uppercutted into the ceiling, twitching oddly, the voice coming from her helmet.

"Who's there?!"

 _"The room beyond, I rest within,"_ the voice answered. Shepard cocked an eyebrow and eyed the console she'd slammed into before. No way that thing was going to help.

"Tali, can you open all panels at our location?"

 _"Hold on, Shepard. Localizing."_ One minute later, a battered wall panel slid open to reveal a massive rachni peering in from a large containment chamber.

"Spirits above…" Garrus muttered in awe.

"Goddess…" Liara whispered.

"Who are you?" Shepard asked.

 _"I am the mother. You have fought my children. You released them from torment. They could not hear the song."_

"Ma'am, she's the Queen," Kaidan clarified.

"What do you mean she wanted 'your sight?' " Shepard demanded.

 _"We remember the old times. Those who came before, who shared your gift of song. Those who led the last cycle. We carry the sights of old."_

"I've seen some files," Liara spoke up. "The queen seems to be saying she remembers the history of her race. The last cycle, that might be the Protheans."

"What part of your 'sight' did she want?"

 _"Those of the last cycle. They created a light. A stream. A pathway. The sour note seeks it. The old one is its hand."_

"The Protheans created something that Saren wants," Liara tentatively translated.

 _"We share. We wish to live free from the sour note. You are not its hands. Release us, and we share."_

"You want to be free?" Shepard asked warily. "From what I've heard, you Rachni had a war with the Citadel races. If you were free, would you start that up again?"

 _"Many cycles, we have been sought out. Our children turned, lost to us. We desire peace and solace."_

"So you just wanted us to leave you alone?" Garrus queried.

 _"Since our gift of song, we have been pursued. Many cycles have passed, but all have sought us as their hands. We tire of this."_

"Well that I can understand," Shepard muttered. "If you can tell us what they were after from you, I don't have any problem letting you go if you'll keep to yourself."

"Uh, Shepard, how do we know she'll keep her word?" Garrus pointed out.

"Because I can tell," Kaidan answered. "I can tell she's sincere."

"How?"

"If Kaidan says that, I'll believe him."

"So you're just going off a hunch from him?"

"It's classified, Vakarian. I'll need clearance to explain, but for now, just trust us."

Garrus made to object, then reconsidered how the Alliance soldiers were in the position to call the shots. "Fine," he muttered. "But I'm going to want that explanation."

 **The Normandy**

Liara held Benezia's hand as Doctor Chakwas ran her scans. The doctor eyed the results on her screen before shaking her head and turning to address the asari.

"I am sorry, but the damage she's suffered is irreparable here," she said. "I don't even know if our medical science can fix it."

Liara's face fell. "There's no way?"

"None that I know of yet," Karin answered. "Our brightest minds might be able to come up with something in the future, but that is a long shot. Considering how old your mother is, perhaps it might be best…" she trailed off, uncertain how the blue archaeologist would react.

"And if there was?"

"Your mother might return to how she was before, and she might not. You have to decide whether or not you really want to try and bring her back, or remember her as she was."

Liara thought about how Benezia used to be, and then about her association with Saren, and wondered about the "sour note" and the "reaper" whose voice had twisted her, according to Shepard. "This was Saren's fault…" she growled, grief now giving way to anger. "He did this!"

"Yes he did," the doctor agreed. "And the Commander is going to do something about it. Don't worry."

"Karin, even if the Alliance can't bring her back, they can figure out what he did to her, can they?"

The doctor thought for a moment before answering. "Liara, if you want us to do that, you have to understand that our methods can be very…invasive. Are you sure you want your mother to go through that?"

Liara didn't answer. The doctor placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "This isn't a decision you should make in anger and grief. We're heading to the Citadel next. You have time to think about it."

The young asari didn't move as the doctor left the bay to give her report. Not at all, except to squeeze her mother's hand. And, so she imagined, her mother squeezed back.

 **Noveria**

 _"This is Noveria Traffic Control. Identify yourself."_

"This is Spectre Tela Vasir, following up on Spectre Vakarian's visit. I'm here to look at the facility for the Council and pick up after him. Sending authentication."

 _"Receiving. Authorized. You are cleared to enter the facility. Proceed to Peak 15 Access."_

"Understood." Morinth, aka, Subject Zero settled back in her seat. This was just too easy.

 **Finally, what some people were waiting for. This demonstrates that there are, in fact, alien characters that can tango with Shepard one on one.**

 **Poor Liara. She's really going through the wringer in this one, eh?**

 **KhazintheDark - One thing that you're forgetting is that a carrier is more than just a transport for a fighter wing. It's also a mobile flight line for maintaining it. For every ONE hour of flight time for a modern fighter jet, there's 20 to 30 hours of maintenance. A Firestorm would be significantly more complex than an F-15, and thus would require more maintenance and equipment.**

 **A Nimitz-class Carrier does not operate with a true flight line. It simply does not have enough room for all the equipment carts and tools and parts to perform full maintenance on its 90-unit air wing. And believe me, those carts take up HUGE amounts of room on a real flight line.**

 **A Firestorm not only has an engine, the space equivalent of avionics equipment, a weapons bank and a fuel tank, but various other things as well. It has a shield generator that maintains structural integrity, heavy armor, communications equipment, heavy cooling equipment for the guns and drive core, and the necessary equipment to handle the antimatter generated by the Elerium Core. That is far more systems than a modern fighter jet. There will consequently be far more maintenance equipment needed for it. Along with maintainers to use it.**

 **An Alliance Carrier only has 20 because it is meant to function indefinitely away from supply lines as a mobile supply base for its attached fleet. It carries fabricator units that can create parts using asteroids as raw material. It houses a fully functional flight line for those twenty instead of a minimized one for 106. That is why the capacity is much more limited. All that extra equipment takes up space. Rather than compromise their maintenance capacity, they go with less spacecraft and a fully functional flight line.  
**

 **And finally, Firestorms may possess cruiser-class striking power, but they don't have the same firing rate. An Alliance Military Cruiser has a drive core two orders of magnitude more powerful to drive not just the weapons, but to propel a much larger ship and power its communications and other critical systems. A Firestorm is just a damage dealer. A Cruiser is a command ship for a unit when a battle group splits up into smaller units. Cruisers can fire their fusion lances once every 30 seconds. A Firestorm takes six minutes between shots to build up sufficient power. But if twenty Firestorms shoot sequentially over equal time, that means that a Carrier has an effective fire rate of one fusion lance round every twelve seconds. With rapid retargeting capability. A cruiser can't match that, but it doesn't have to. Cruisers serve as Naval Squadron command units, directing and commanding the destroyers, frigates, prowlers and other ships under them when the Group command or Fleet command ships aren't present. Cruisers are usually commanded by Captains and Commanders.  
**

 **To everyone else, sorry for the long author note.**

 **Can anyone figure out what the Queen was hinting at? Cookies if you do!**

 **And sorry, but Jack won't be in the story. At least, not the CANON Jack. Psionics are flat out superior to biotics here. Biotics require active element zero in someone's biology. Psionics don't. Biotics require implants to control and direct the energy, and draw off the wielder's metabolism. Psionics don't. With that in mind, the Alliance (and more specifically, Cerberus) has no reason to experiment with producing human biotics.**

 **Review!**


	15. Revelations

**Sorry it took so long to get back to this. Life and work belted me upside the head. Enjoy!**

 **Edit: It's been pointed out to me that I should have used the word Sapient instead of Sentient when referring to the Rachni. Thanks, Eipok.**

Chapter Fourteen

 **Tartarus**

Director Harper looked up when he heard the new incoming transmission. "Welcome back, Shepard, and I see that Lieutenant Commander Alenko is here as well."

 _"We're in a bit of a tight spot as far as security and information goes, sir. Commander Alenko recently developed psionic abilities."_

"Hmm," the director thought. "and I presume that he was forced to use them during the mission?"

 _"The Spectre didn't see it, but we ran into the Rachni Queen,"_ Kaidan explained. _"The commander made the decision to spare her because I could tell she just wanted to be left alone."_

"And now Spectre Vakarian wants an explanation." Harper finished.

 _"What should we tell him, sir?"_ Shepard asked.

"Nothing for now. The Alliance Council will have to decide how to reveal the knowledge of psionic power. I believe that the answers will come out in front of the Citadel councilors."

 _"I'm sorry about this, sir,"_ Kaidan apologized.

"Not your fault," the director waved off. "It was bound to come out eventually. At least we'll be revealing it while cooperating with the Citadel instead of during a hostile diplomatic incident. However, you will be pulled from the team to undergo proper training after debriefing the Citadel."

 _"Understood, sir."_

"Now onto more interesting matters. It may or may not surprise either of you to learn that there is a 94% genetic similarity between the Rachni and the Chryssalids."

Shepard and Alenko looked at each other before the commander answered. _"After seeing what the Rachni are like, the feral ones at least, I can't really say I'm surprised, sir."_

 _"From our preliminary analysis of the samples you scanned for us,"_ Doctor Vahlen chimed in, _"it appears that some Rachni were genetically engineered to produce the Chryssalid strain that the Ethereals used against us. The primary differences are some humanoid physiological alterations and the change from polymorphic sexual reproduction to parasitic parthenogenic reproduction. That means to reproduce asexually as a multicellular life form without the introduction of outside DNA,"_ she clarified, seeing the blank expressions on the two soldier's faces.

"Now the very interesting question is whether or not the Chryssalid Virus would affect the Rachni," Harper noted. "We'll have the answers to that once Subject Zero returns with physical samples from the lab on Noveria. Incidentally, Shepard, I commend you for having the foresight to not use the Neutron Purge function at full power. I'm concerned with how you might have covered that with your teammates however."

 _"I told them that as a show of good faith to the Rachni Queen, we'd have to delay it to give her a chance to escape. I slipped in a worm while Tali wasn't looking to make sure it didn't wipe out everything."_

"Then Subject Zero will complete the Neutron Purge once she finishes with the lab, and no one in the galaxy will be the wiser."

 _"Subject Zero? What's that about, sir?"_ Alenko asked.

"All you need to know, Commander Alenko, is that Subject Zero is a Jaeger, like Commander Shepard," Harper replied. "Anything else is above your clearance level."

 _"Yes sir."_

"Doctor Vahlen will continue her research and we will send covert operatives to shadow the Rachni. You will report to the Embassy for further orders. Fair warning to both of you: expect General Summers to get involved with this now."

 _"Understood, sir."_

"And Shepard, see if you can get Dr. T'Soni to look through her mother's memories. Perhaps she can give us a better insight into Saren's plans that way."

 _"No promises, sir."_

 **The Normandy**

"You know, I'm still waiting on that explanation, Shepard," Garrus called as the two Alliance officers left the communications room."

"Orders from the top, Vakarian," Shepard answered. "It's going to wait until we reach the Embassy at least."

"Don't act like you didn't expect that, whelp," Wrex chuckled as he took a swig of something from the Normandy's bar. "Pah! Even human liquor doesn't kick as hard as Ryncol."

"Most beverages aren't radioactive," Kaidan noted dryly.

"And more's the pity," Wrex laughed as he lobbed the bottle to Garrus.

"I never thought of the Rachni as sentient," Tali murmured, still scrolling through her combat footage log. "How different would the galaxy be if we'd met them peacefully?"

"Not much," the old krogan replied. "You'd still have idiots scrabbling over each other for the smallest advantages and pleasures. People all over the galaxy are the same: always looking out for themselves."

"But think of what we could learn from them!" Tali exclaimed. "They saw the Protheans. They might have seen other civilizations. There is so much they could have shared!"

"You sound an awful lot like Dr. T'Soni," Garrus noted as he poured himself a shot of vodka and threw it back. "Wow, one hit, and everything starts to curve, just like Frelto. Anyway, the Rachni attacked us first. We answered with everything we had. Now, they might come back, but probably not by the numbers if the Alliance has anything to say about it."

"You sound like you don't give a damn that we nearly exterminated a sentient race!" Tali snapped.

"First, the word you're looking for is 'sapient.' Second, if they'd wanted peaceful relations with us, they wouldn't have attacked us on sight, pup," Wrex growled.

"You saw the footage! The queen clearly said she only wanted to be left alone! They had been exploited by other races!"

"Hindsight is 20/20," Shepard cautioned. "It's easy to say who was wrong after the fact. But your civilization had to make decisions fast."

"Exactly," Garrus nodded, taking another swallow. "Our leaders did what they thought was best at the time. I'm not excusing them at all," he held his hand up, forestalling another indignant protest from Tali. "I'm kind of glad we didn't exterminate them all. Now they have a chance, and maybe things will be peaceful this time."

"You all should be more worried about what will happen when the galaxy hears that Benezia joined with Saren," Wrex said as he pulled out his canteen. "One of the Asari Republic's most respected figures running around with the most controversial and anti-human Spectre and getting involved with an attack on a human colony world? This would be like if one of the Migrant Fleet Admirals got caught smuggling Geth onto a Quarian ship."

"Didn't figure you for a political analyst," Garrus said while Tali bristled in the background.

"I don't dabble in politics. Doesn't mean I don't keep track of what's going on. It pays to know what's happening in the galaxy."

"Why would that be a huge deal?"

"That brat, Tevos? She's the head of the Pacifist faction now that Benezia bought it. Her rival is some upstart named Irissa. And _she's_ a warmonger. In fact, she somehow got it into her tentacles that the Citadel can straight up butt crests with the Alliance. Tevos was a follower of Benezia back in the old days. Now this happens? It'll be a big dent in her credibility. And if Tevos gets tossed out, guess who will be calling the shots then?" Wrex took a long pull before capping his canteen. "Hope you like the smell of plasma, pup."

"Isn't that a little extreme?" Kaidan asked.

"A good turian follows orders. Asari Commandos don't back down. And the STG has probably had it with the Alliance making them look like clueless pyjacks. If Irissa somehow becomes Councilor, I would not be surprised if that happened."

An uncomfortable silence settled in before Shepard broke it. "Well speaking of Benezia, does anyone know where Dr. T'Soni is?"

"Last I saw her, she was in the med bay with the doc," Garrus replied.

"I can't imagine what it's like to lose your family," Tali thought aloud as the two humans moved to the elevator.

"It'll happen sooner or later," Wrex noted. "At least she didn't do the killing herself."

"Spoken from experience, Wrex?" Garrus asked, as he shakily got up from his seat.

"I've seen it happen before," the old krogan steadied the Spectre before turning toward the elevator himself. "Leave it at that.

 **Citadel, Alliance Embassy**

General Summers himself was waiting in the lobby when Shepard and the team arrived. "Welcome back, Commander."

"Sir!"

"No saluting indoors, remember?" the old soldier rebuked. "Where's Matriarch Benezia?"

"She's still in the Normandy's medical bay, sir," Kaidan volunteered.

"I see." The general let his eye linger on Liara for a moment before continuing. "Captain Anderson and the ambassador are at the Presidium right now. We will debrief you there, and then I'll have words for them. Let's move, people."

"Yes sir!"

 **Citadel, Presidium**

"Ah, they're here," Udina gestured.

Sparatus caught sight of General Summers and had to suppress a shiver of apprehension. Memories of the first meeting still haunted him.

"Commander, I was telling the Council what you told your superiors, but I think they want to hear from you directly. What happened at Noveria?"

"We requested access to the Peak 15 facility that Saren and Benezia were renting out. We ran into the Geth at the entrance, and then the Rachni, deeper inside."

"The Rachni," Valern breathed in shock. "Of all things for Saren to meddle with…"

"What was Saren doing with them at that lab?" Tevos asked.

"Binary Helix was studying them as a whole," Garrus chimed in. "but Benezia and Saren seemed really interested in something that the Rachni Queen had. What was it? A genetic memory?" He turned to Shepard.

"The Rachni have a genetic memory of everything their race has encountered," Liara clarified. "Saren was after one memory in particular. The Queen said it was some kind of 'light,' or 'pathway' that the Protheans made in the past."

"Not a Prothean Beacon?" Sparatus asked.

"I don't think so."

"Benezia was being controlled by Saren somehow," Shepard added. "We freed her for a bit, and she told us that it has something to do with Sovereign. That's what she called Saren's dreadnought."

"Actually, she called it his Reaper, ma'am," Kaidan corrected.

Shepard cocked her head, remembering how the word 'Reaper' echoed in her nightmares since getting zapped by the Beacon. What did it even mean?

"Hey, didn't Saren say something like 'the Reapers are coming'?" Nihlus wondered.

"He said that in the recording," Tali answered.

"Saren could just be delusional," Sparatus noted. "Did Matriarch Benezia say anything about what Saren is after?"

"No," Shepard replied. "Nothing at all. She didn't have that long to tell us anything before we had to put her down."

"So all we have to go on as far as Saren's goals is what the Rachni Queen told you," Valern spoke up. "How do you know whether or not she was telling the truth?"

"Because Lieutenant Commander Alenko could read her mind and tell if she was lying," General Summers cut in.

There was a moment of silence. "'Read her mind?'" Sparatus repeated skeptically.

"The Rachni have the ability to communicate telepathically, so our scientists tell me. They have what we call psionic abilities, powers of the mind."

"Mental powers have long been only the domain of science fiction," Valern chided. "Many studies have been conducted in the interest of proving such phenomena, only to fail at every turn. What proof do you have of these 'psionic abilities?'"

"Commander, if you please?" the general gestured.

Without warning, a terrifying alien presence smothered the Presidium. What could only be described as overwhelming fear and panic swept through everyone in the room, including the C-Sec guards and hidden Spectre observers. Sparatus involuntarily bared his talons. Valern cowered behind his lectern. Tevos's skin turned a very pale shade of lilac. Tali latched onto Garrus, shrieking through her helmet. Wrex and Garrus simply whipped out their weapons and swept the room warily, training and instincts taking over.

Then suddenly, that presence vanished. An impossibly heavy weight seemed to lift from the Presidium, and everyone caught their breath.

"That was an ability we call Psi-Panic," the general continued. "Our soldiers use it to disorient and disrupt enemy forces in the operational area. They reach out with their minds to influence those of the enemy. It is a very basic ability that many of our Psionic troops are taught as part of training. It is quite effective, as you have just experienced."

"Goddess…" Liara pressed a hand over her racing heart and joined everyone else in eyeballing the Commander, who stood with her arms folded casually across her chest.

"Psionic individuals can reach out with their minds and read the enemy, influence the enemy, and actively harm the enemy. Those with proper training can even communicate telepathically. As you have just witnessed, Commander Shepard has these abilities, as does Lieutenant Commander Alenko."

"I see," Valern managed to reply in a chastened tone.

"Commander Shepard made a bargain with the Rachni Queen. She was free to leave in peace after giving us that information. We have no reason to doubt her sincerity."

"You've made your point, General," Tevos said. "But even with what Benezia and the Queen told us, that information does not help us find Saren. For all we know, this 'light' could simply be metaphorical or a misinterpretation."

"True," Summers admitted. "It is quite possible that Saren is simply chasing ghosts. But he learned of this particular ghost from somewhere. Given his obsession with Prothean Beacons, I'm inclined to think that perhaps we should look further into records and studies regarding the Protheans."

"I haven't come across anything like this 'light' in all my years of study," Liara put in, tentatively. "but I can go back through the archives from Thessia and my personal notes. Maybe I can come up with something."

"It would be wise to pursue that avenue," Valern agreed. "On that note, the STG has found another lead. The research colony of Feros, backed by the Hypathia Institute, has gone silent. Geth activity was detected nearby, and it may be in your best interest to head there soon seeing as the Alliance corporation ExoGeni was also working there."

"You think that Saren has an interest in the Prothean ruins there?" Liara asked.

"Unlikely. Nothing notable was turned up in recent months according to the institute records, and Saren would have had ample opportunity to go there as a Spectre beforehand. ExoGeni arrived in system with their team of consultants two weeks ago, and shortly after, communication was lost with the colony. Prior to that, unknown activity was reported at nearby relays, now confirmed to have been Geth."

"Seems like a solid lead," Anderson noted.

"Agreed," Summers rumbled. "Commander, you have a new objective. I advise you make haste."

"Wait," Tevos interrupted. "if I may ask, did you recover Benezia? I…I would like to pay my respects to her memory…"

Everyone looked at Liara, whose face twisted in consternation.

 **Normandy, Medical Bay**

 _"Search her memories?" she repeated. "I suppose I could, but…" she trailed off. Truthfully, the idea terrified her. She was terrified of what Saren had twisted her mother into. What unknown horrors would she see if she melded with Benezia?_

 _"I'm not asking you to do this now," Shepard clarified, "and you don't have to do it at all if you don't want to. I understand that some things should be private."_

 _"I don't know," Liara glanced down at her mother's comatose form, lingering on the EKG monitor which showed little brain activity. "I have to think about it."_

 _"That's all I ask," the commander answered, and turned to leave. "We'll arrive at the Citadel in a day."_

 _As the door slid shut, Liara held her mother's hand and looked up, lost in happier days. Her mother's comforting arms as she whispered words of comfort, soothing the tears from other Asari making fun of her pureblood heritage. Her mirthful smile when Liara stepped on the University of Thessia stage to accept her doctorate in Prothean Studies. The times they had played together while she learned how to use her biotics._

 _And then she looked back down and remembered the contempt on her face back in that facility. The utter disregard of their familial bond. The…monster that Saren had somehow twisted her into._

 _Saren. She clenched her other hand and biotic energy swirled around her fist in anger. He was responsible. She visualized the turian's face and snarled silently as she imagined extracting retribution for this violation of her family. Suddenly, a few foreign thoughts and images entered her mind. Thoughts so alien and callous that she jerked in surprise. She was brought back to reality to find herself backed against another medical table, two meters away from her mother's body._

 _She was still frozen there, two hours later, when Dr. Chakwas went back on duty, ruminating on the most disturbing aspect of those thoughts she'd experienced. What frightened her the most, out of the thoughts that bled over from her mother, was the most repugnant feeling toward the rogue turian. Dedication._

 **Citadel, Presidium**

"Councilor Tevos," Liara replied slowly, "I appreciate the thought, but I think it's better for us both if you don't see what Saren turned her into."

Tevos's eyes fell to her hands. "I see…" she murmured.

"Saren will pay for everything he's done," Sparatus rumbled. "If you want to make any arrangements for your mother, please let us know, Dr. T'Soni."

"I appreciate it."

 **Feros**

Saren pulled back from the Thorian, the knowledge fresh in his mind.

 **The exchange is over. Your thrall for my memory.**

"It most certainly is," the turian replied.

As he made his way out of the Thorian's chamber, a geth came up to him.

"Once we leave, destroy it. No one else must follow the trail to the Conduit."

"Yes, Arterius-commander. Update: intercepted communication from Special Tasks Group to Citadel Councilors. Citadel aware of Geth presence near Feros."

"Which means that the Alliance search team will be coming here soon," Saren finished.

"Statistically 97% likely, Arterius-commander."

"Then let's give the Butcher a proper welcome. Station your new units on the skyscrapers. Don't let her even approach the Thorian."

"Yes, Arterius-commander."

 **The Normandy**

"You're certain about this, Liara?" Dr. Chakwas eyeballed her while four marines and two technicians stood by to move the stasis tube.

Liara sighed. "No, but my mother would want to make sure that no one else could be twisted the way Saren twisted her. The Alliance has Psionic powers. No one else knows the mind better than your people."

Chakwas nodded resignedly. "I suppose you would know what your mother would want after that meld you performed." She turned to the technicians. "Treat her body respectfully. Minimally invasive procedures, if possible."

"Yes ma'am."

As the loading bay ramp closed, Liara's last sight was of the six Alliance personnel walking the stasis tube into the transport shuttle across the way. She brought up a clenched fist, which sparked with biotic lightning. Never again, she swore sliently. Saren would never twist another person if she had anything to say about it.

Behind her, the elevator doors opened to disgorge Garrus and Ashley Williams. "So I hear you want to learn how to fight for real?" Garrus called.

Liara turned to face him, her face schooled into a glare. "I want Saren to pay."

Williams walked right up to Liara, a steely expression of slight contempt on her face. For five seconds, the two women glared at each other. Then a small smirk appeared on the commando's face, and she held up her old training armor and rifle.

Once Liara finished strapping on the armor, she noticed six other Alliance Marines had arrived in the loading bay. Garrus clapped his hands and rubbed them together.

"We got three days to get to Feros, so let's get started. Class is now in session!"

 _Codex: Alliance Augmentation Research_

 _Following X-COM's gene lab augments from the Ethereal War, the Transhuman soldier became a very powerful and desirable asset. In the postwar world, the armed forces of the world were not satisfied with the relatively crude wartime modifications that X-COM fielded. More streamlined augments and mods were necessary._

 _Cerberus is the source of much of the Alliance's genetic combat modifications. What many do not know is that these were painstakingly perfected using human experimentation. Cerberus draws its lab rats from the Alliance prison planets, specifically Capital Offenders. Those unlucky enough to be inducted into the Experimental Modification Research division can hope for, at best, a quick death by multiple organ failure. Few internally protest such treatment, reasoning that since Capital Offenders are legally determined to have forfeited all human rights protections by virtue of their criminal actions, the experiments are their "just desserts," as it were._

 _In the event that Cerberus runs out of live material, the division has Ethereal-designed cloning labs on standby, ready to make lobotomized clones of the unfortunate convicts to continue their research._

 _While morally repugnant and undoubtedly a violation of every declaration of sapient rights, the division has produced many medical advances that have improved and saved thousands more lives than those of the convicts who were killed to obtain them. Still, it's dubious nature has led Director Harper to keep the program hidden from the more upstanding Alliance officials, such as Doctor Vahlen._

 _Codex: Psionic Armor (technique)_

 _A more advanced application of a Psionic Barrier, this technique involves the psionic individual in question creating a barrier around themselves that shields against or reduces the force of enemy attacks. Most users cannot perform this technique while moving, resulting in a phenomena called "Armor Lock," where the user is forced to remain in a static and potentially vulnerable position._

 _Sufficiently experienced and strong willed individuals can bypass this restriction, which allows them to invisibly augment their armor and withstand greater impacts and threats than appearances would suggest. Truly talented practitioners can emulate the effects of powered armor, increasing their strength and speed to truly superhuman levels._

 **I will be taking time to look at playthroughs of Feros so I can write the scenes properly for the next chapters. Bear with me. Hopefully, I don't end up taking two months to write the next one. Prepare to see new geth units and tactics.**

 **Challenge: If this story gets more than 225 reviews by the time I post the next chapter, I'll throw in a small spoiler. So please Review!**


	16. Once is an anomaly Twice is a trend

**Well it looks like I overestimated how many reviews I could pull with that last chapter, but I did give my word. Not enough reviews, so no spoilers this time.**

 **But there's a hint to the future of the story at the very end. Dun dun dun!**

Chapter Fifteen

 **Citadel, Presidium**

"How do we deal with this?" Tevos asked, looking at her colleagues.

"I would advise against revealing it to the public, especially to our military forces," Valern answered dryly.

"You don't seem like you were particularly surprised," Sparatus noted somewhat accusingly.

"I have had the luxury of reviewing the small amount of combat footage involving the Alliance that the STG has managed to reconstruct or otherwise acquire. Often times, the enemy panicked in their presence, notably when Commander Shepard was eviscerating pirate resistance on Torfan. The STG listed several possibilities, including an alternative use of their nanites or airborne psychoactive agents. Field autopsies did not correlate with those theories. No chemical traces, no hint of inactive nanites, nothing at all except extremely high levels of stress hormones inconsistent with trained or experienced fighters."

"That still doesn't really suggest psychic powers though."

"You don't seem quite as accepting of the idea as you were when the ambassador and the general were here."

"You're more of the scientist than I am, Valern. If you can accept it, so can I."

"We're getting off topic, gentlemen," Tevos butted in. "How do we react as a civilization?"

"With silence. Ignoring whether the Alliance's demonstration was genuine or a very elaborate hoax, even the mere suggestion of humans possessing hidden mental powers would tear apart our civilization. The backlash against humans in our society would be tremendous. Consider how many humans are working in C-Sec. In Law Enforcement, trust in ones colleagues and partners is paramount. The knowledge that some humans may have these abilities…"

Sparatus paled. "It would be chaos. Not only that, defense lawyers would have a field day ripping apart any case against clients that humans were involved in."

"And think of the rank and file military. Whether we enjoy contemplating the possibility or not, the Alliance is a potential enemy power. Make no mistake, Tevos, Sparatus, we are their inferior in many ways, and we have a fairly poor history with them. Of all enemies, they are who our military is doing its utmost to prepare for. And yet we are always behind. No matter what motivational lies officers may tell their subordinates, our soldiers and commandos are not stupid. To them, fighting the Alliance is suicide already. Now if these same people to whom we entrust the safety of our civilization hear that the Alliance has yet another trump card that we have no countermeasures for, how quickly do you think their martial discipline will crumble?"

"But Spectre Vakarian and the krogan mercenary kept their wits!" Tevos protested.

"Urdnot Wrex is one of the oldest, most intelligent and most formidable of the Krogan Battlemasters. And Spectre Vakarian is Spectre Vakarian, a man in whom survival instinct seems lacking. They are not ordinary soldiers. The ordinary rank and file lack their training or experience. And absent an actual war, I do not forsee our forces obtaining that training or experience against the Alliance's psionic soldiers and living to tell the tale."

"The people will learn the truth eventually," she fired back. "How many of the C-Sec guards and Spectres who were in here will talk? And how many more people will listen and remember? We can't hide the truth forever. I would think the fact that some quarian pilgrims were overheard talking about the Alliance nanite weapon on Kharshan is a prime example."

"She's right," Sparatus added. "On the flipside of our rank and file soldiers, they have to be alert to the potential threat at some point. Throwing them in unprepared and ignorant means writing off entire combat units. At the very least, our senior commanders should be made aware so they can start figuring out how to break the news."

"Not now," Valern shook his head vehemently. "Not when we lack absolute confirmation or even the beginnings of planned countermeasures. Speculation among the people without something to give them hope or security is something we must avoid. I fully agree with you, Sparatus, but we can't afford to have this leak now."

"Then when?" Tevos demanded. "The Alliance has been spectacularly adept at denying us the opportunity to learn their weaknesses. You've told us as much several times. Given that, I don't think it's likely we'll have the 'beginnings of planned countermeasures' until it's far too late."

"I don't know," the salarian admitted. "We can only hope that the Alliance will slip up eventually. In the meantime however, we must do what we can to control the dangers we face. And putting a leash on this is a simple measure."

"Until it breaks."

 **The Normandy**

 _Insectoid forms scuttled across the rust-red skyline, the now-ruined city of the masters of the last cycle in the distance…_

 _She choked and gurgled through the breather tube in her throat, struggling against her restraints as the Meld embedded artificial muscle fibers deep in her dermal layer, her nerves screaming in untold agony…_

 _Chitinous fingers clutched an alien rifle, spewing a stream of green defiance at the towering behemoth as its' main gun ignited the city block around her…_

 _Tall and slender forms easily herded pacified Rachni onto glowing circular transport craft, forms that she recognized as Ethereal…_

 _She recoiled from the purple orb, shrieking in a futile effort to drown out the cacophony of thoughts that flooded her newly opened mind before the darkness mercifully silenced them…_

 _Feelings of hopelessness and despair as she gazed through foreign eyes at the darkening skies above, hearing other voices in an alien tongue that she nonetheless could understand growing louder and louder, the voice of a defeated race speaking one word: Reapers…_

Shepard shot up from her bed, involuntarily clutching at her throat, gasping. After a moment, she gripped her warm and aching forehead, remnants of the visions and flashbacks still lingering on the backs of her eyelids. They were getting worse. Now the memories that the Rachni Queen somehow passed to her were mixing in with her past and the images from the damaged beacon.

The irritated and sleep-deprived woman donned her service uniform before stumbling to the door and taking the stairs down to the Loading Bay where she knew the Spectre and Williams had set up an ad-hoc firing range and miniature urban combat trainer.

"You look terrible," Garrus noted from the wall as he observed Williams running her "class" through firing drills.

"Thanks," Shepard answered dryly. "I never would have guessed."

"What's wrecking your sleeping habits?"

"The voices in my head."

"If I didn't know you were psionic, I'd call the doc."

"I'm serious!" the red-head glared. "Ever since that Beacon on Eden Prime, I keep getting these nightmares and I hear the word 'Reapers' over and over again. And I keep seeing aliens getting killed by giant mechanical squids. You try sleeping when that's all you see at night."

"Sounds rough," the turian nodded sympathetically.

"Figured I'd come down and shoot a few rounds," she muttered. "and I'm not picky on the targets."

"Well it's boring watching your men flunk through room clearing drills with Dr. T'Soni. Mind if we go a few rounds on the range? See who's better?"

"I'll beat you with any weapon you name. Ballistic or laser."

"That's what I like to hear," Garrus grinned. "Always nice to get that confidence front and center so I can shoot a few holes in it."

It was a close contest, closer than Shepard would have thought. Her augments and trained reflexes should theoretically have given her the advantage, but there was something to the turian that let him match her pace and accuracy.

"Now I can see how you dropped everyone in Fist's bar with one headshot," she noted as she cleaned the practice pistol.

"Always had a knack for hitting the target," the turian replied. "My rifle is the same one I used in Blackwatch. Never stopped using it. Nihlus told me there's a betting pool on the Citadel over how long I'll last using a long gun in close quarters because most people can't aim fast enough."

"Probably helps that your gun is heavily modded."

"Yeah, it's got tricks built into it. Have to spend a lot of time calibrating it. But everything else? All skill."

"Hmm, confidence. I like that in a man," Shepard smirked at him before loading the practice pistol, racking the slide and hammer, blindly and carelessly aiming to the side and firing all fifteen rounds at the target. Then she placed the pistol on the table and reeled in the range target, revealing a single ragged hole in the X-ring, to Garrus's utter astonishment. "It's so much fun to shoot a few holes in it," she said as she walked back to the elevator.

 **Illium**

Leng gazed up at the skyscraper, knowing his target worked out of an office on one of the top floors. Typical. The rich and powerful looking down on those who are not. In this case, he was sent after a financier who was suspected of being a money-launderer for the Hegemony Remnant, and previously for certain pirate groups in the Terminus Systems. Or so the briefing said.

Not that he particularly cared. The bitch would die, one way or another, and then maybe he could get back to more exciting missions on a proper battlefield instead of playing corporate assassin.

He turned and casually walked off to the safehouse to plan the mission, not noticing a scrutinizing pair of black eyes fixed on his back.

* * *

Thane Krios may have considered himself retired from the wet work business, but by no means would he forget the lessons and skills learned. After bidding his wife a good morning at work, he'd noticed an unfamiliar human looking around in a manner distinct from tourists and visitors. Years of experience from reading body language told him that this man was not here for leisure. He carried himself professionally, albeit in an arrogant way. His hand kept unconsciously twitching toward his hip, fingers almost in a grip-like position, the same way a soldier or police officer with an alarming reliance on their sidearm would.

There were no markings, no tattoos, no bulges on his person suggesting a weapon. From his experience, gang members like those of Eclipse liked to distinguish themselves and rarely went anywhere without moderate to large amounts of ordnance. This man lacked any of that, meaning he was either an agent of organization, or a skilled and experienced professional infiltrator.

It was interesting that no one else in the area had so much as looked at him. The only reason Thane himself had noticed was his own instinctive sense that something was out of place. He looked at the top of the skyscraper where the man had been gazing. Whatever had drawn the man's interest likely boded ill for those who worked inside.

Thane was painfully aware that few people on Illium could truly be considered innocent, particularly himself. But he had no intention of standing by and allowing harm to come to others. If there was one thing he'd learned as a consequence of marriage and leaving his old life behind, it was that life was sacred and special. He had sworn off being an assassin to atone for his sins as a murderer for that very reason.

He would deal with this man himself. The local law enforcement, or what passed for it, could deal with common criminals and gangs. But he knew how easily a professional assassin could rip apart a band of patrolmen with no experience. His skin tingled slightly as he exercised his biotics, long unused, in a shameful anticipation of battle. Thane Krios was going to work.

 **Feros**

"So we're heading to ExoGeni's field headquarters," Shepard told everyone as the Skyranger descended. "No responses to hails so far, so be ready for a fight, but remember to check your fire."

"Hey Liara," Garrus called. "you know anything about Feros?"

"About as much as you do," the scientist replied nervously. "It's an old Prothean mega-city. Most Prothean artifacts were probably already taken off by research teams decades ago. I can't imagine why Saren would come here looking for something."

"It could be related to ExoGeni's recent contract here," Shepard noted. "They are a biomedical research corporation. They could be studying something like the Rachni. We know that Saren isn't just after Prothean artifacts. Maybe he found another species with information."

"Hopefully not one that we almost destroyed like the Rachni," Tali chimed in.

Electronic eyes locked on to the descending craft, and a large almost insectoid shape rose from its disguised place on the skyway, allowing a menacing looking armature to extend. Two similar shapes did the same, each angling itself at the ship. Intake vents opened, allowing ambient air to enter the ionizing chambers of the weapons mounted on the large robotic units. Eezo reactors whined as they spun up, increasing their power output to critical levels. And then each one fired a pulse of energized particles.

The copilot had been eyeing the EMS sensor blips when two of the three blasts flew right by the Skyranger. "We're under fire! Enemy units down below!"

The robotic gun platforms analyzed the shots and corrected, but now the ship was alerted, jinking randomly under the guidance of the crew to dodge. Shot after shot reached out for them, several missing by scant meters.

"Gonna be a rough landing, ma'am!" the pilot called over the intercom as the ExoGeni outpost grew closer.

"Brace!" Shepard yelled before the Skyranger touched down in a shower of sparks and skidded almost sideways toward the ExoGeni garage door. In a daring display of skill, the pilot managed to flip the aircraft around and fired its rear thrusters at max capacity. The craft shuddered at the abrupt deceleration, chassis groaning ominously over the din of screeching metal. Then a loud bang echoed as the entire team was jolted sideways against their restraints.

"Hot exit! Move move move!" The rear ramp dropped, revealing a red-hot and torn garage door that the team subsequently sprinted through. After Liara made it inside, the Skyranger lifted off, revealing the scarred hull plating from the "landing," before moving out of the alcove and into an overwatch position.

"Status report!" the commander ordered.

"She'll need some love at the body shop, but she'll fly, ma'am. We're going to try and spot the enemy for the Normandy, keep them off your ass until you call for pickup."

"What?!" Liara exclaimed. "No! You can't just fire from orbit! The skyway is one of the few things keeping these buildings standing! You'll bring them all down if the Normandy fires at it!"

"Negative Lieutenant. Orbital fire will compromise the structure," Shepard relayed. "If you want to take them out, you'll have to do the job yourself."

The pilot swore over the radio as he eyed the enemy force massing down below. "Make it fast, ma'am. I don't know how long we can keep them off you. Estimate the enemy at above Company strength. They got some weird walking artillery pieces."

"Then you might have to get creative. We'll try to move as fast as we can."

"Good luck, ma'am."

"Nothing like a timed mission to give you that sense of urgency," Garrus noted sardonically.

"Ah, what's life without a challenge?" Wrex laughed.

"I'd prefer to KEEP my life, thank you very much!" Tali snapped.

"Then let's move," Shepard ordered.

The team of six moved up a ramp on the left and then split to search both sides.

"Well this is familiar," Garrus called over the comm. "I guess the Protheans love their indestructible blue walls."

"We're not getting through this way, Commander," Tali chimed in.

"Well I got a door over on this side," Shepard answered. "No telling what's on the other side."

"Commander!" Shepard had already smashed the lock when she heard Williams cry out in warning. She whirled around just in time to see an incoming hail of fire from several geth on an upper level.

"Ambush!" She yelled, dragging Liara with her into cover just as the doorway she'd "unlocked" began opening on its own. A second group of geth emerged, sprinting into the room. One geth in particular turned to aim at her. This one was unusual. It was slightly larger than the other geth, and appeared to be wearing heavy armor plate in contrast to the rest.

And it screeched once before its gun spat out a hail of hypersonic shrapnel at her position. At once, every visible geth turned to concentrate on her cover, pinning her and the asari down in one place.

Shepard steeled her will and sprang from cover, rushing forward to attack the unusual geth. To her surprise, the geth _caught her fist._ And then it swung its shotgun at her head. The weapon slammed into her psionic shield with unexpected force, but now it was the machine's turn to be surprised. The geth runtimes had expected such an attack to physically connect with the female's cranium and either collapse the skull or create an abrupt torqueing motion that would result in a neck injury. Instead, the human recovered as if from a slap to the face, and rammed her other fist into its shoulder joint.

The physical reinforcement of this particular unit prevented the servomotor from being crushed, but it was now severely out of alignment. The impact also jostled the unit enough for Shepard to pull her fist free and wind up before punching it in the chest.

The armored geth flew into one of its comrades, leaving its shotgun behind. Shepard turned and rushed down another geth unit, throwing a magnetic grenade at it before punting the unfortunate unit up into the second level where the resulting explosion destroyed the railing that the geth above were using as cover. Liara, who'd regained her bearings, launched a bolt of biotic lightning at the group, disintegrating the concrete floor the geth stood on and dropping the cluster to the ground, where they were promptly introduced to the wrath of a krogan battlemaster.

The armored geth had gotten back up and surprisingly ripped off its own damaged arm before rushing down the commander. "Oh no you don't!" Williams screamed as she fired a grenade launcher at it, knocking the geth out of its charge. The geth twisted as it landed, before whipping its makeshift weapon at the Alliance marine and using the motion to scramble back to its feet. The flying arm smacked Williams in the chest, throwing her to the ground with the wind knocked out of her.

Garrus swore as his shot at the odd unit missed. The geth raced across the ground crouched halfway until it snagged a rifle from one of its fallen comrades. Then it stopped and pivoted, kicking out with a foot seemingly at thin air. Garrus noticed almost too late that the kick had sent a live grenade right at his and Tali's position.

"Oh that's not fa-!" The explosion slammed him against the energy barrier.

"Garrus!" Tali shrieked before scrambling over to the fallen turian.

Shepard took that opportunity to rush the geth herself, plowing through the hail of fire with contemptuous ease. The geth raised the rifle and blocked her punch with its forearm before using the force behind it to perform a reverse roundhouse. Shepard dodged under it, turning her back before pivoting down and stabbing her leg up in a powerful back kick.

The geth flew forward to land sprawling on the ground. It barely got up on its knees before a ludicrously powerful shotgun blast obliterated its upper back.

"Tough little pyjack," Wrex noted as he racked his shotgun and fired again for good measure.

"Hope there aren't more of those," Shepard agreed before a stomping sound drew her attention. From the doorway she opened, a large spider-like machine emerged, the massive cannon on its head glowing menacingly.

"Well fuck me."

 **Illium**

Thane cursed himself as he evaded a blow from the astonishingly fast human. He should have known he'd been made when the man walked into a parking garage a few blocks away from the skyscraper he'd scoped out.

The human was clearly no run-of-the-mill assassin. No hesitation, no wasted movement, an elegant and lethal efficiency as he sought to end the drell's life. Thane was drawing more and more on his bodily reserves to keep pace and remain alive.

Leng was enjoying this. He hadn't expected to run across so skilled an enemy on this corporate cesspool. And a Drell, no less. Fragile even by the standards of other races, one punch from him would be enough to outright kill the alien. And yet he was dodging or parrying every single hit.

Thane took advantage of a slight positional lapse to form a biotic warp field and throw it in the human's chest. To his amazement, the field simply fizzled out.

The human's smirk was the only warning he had before he stumbled backward and fell, the world spinning and blurring before his eyes, eardrums ringing and senses haywire. Training took over. He closed his eyes and mentally focused on his photographic memory and his position in the garage. He rolled backward, blindly dodging a heel drop from the human before scrambling to his feet. A swish of air, roughly 4/3rds of a meter off the ground. He lurched his upper body back, feeling the wake of a combat boot passing just centimeters in front of his face. Another sound. He focused his biotics at his left forearm, creating a barrier of air that he used to safely deflect the human's backhand up and over before twisting his hand and grabbing the man's wrist. With his other hand, he created a pulse of energy around his fist while yanking on the man's arm. He lashed out and unleashed the pulse, blasting the man away from him and buying himself some precious space.

Kai chuckled, incredulous that the Drell was still fighting under the influence of a Mindfray. "You're really something, alien. But I have an appointment to keep. Maybe next time, we'll fight seriously."

Thane scowled blindly and lunged, only to be halted in his tracks by a sharp stabbing pain in his lung. He stumbled, fingers scrabbling around until they found the source of the pain: a small throwing shiv.

"No..." he whispered to himself as he crumpled to the floor. "I can't…" The world swam into view and he fumbled with his omnitool for a few seconds. Then it started to fade away again as sirens started up in the distance. _Amonkira, I failed…_

* * *

The medical examiner closed the bag over the face of Riyaan Har'al before motioning to the assistants to haul the dead asari into the transport. Meanwhile, two officers were talking to the hysterical young woman that was her coworker.

"I don't-I don't know why someone would kill her!" She sobbed. "We were just paper pushers! Why?!"

"Ma'am, we'll do our best to find out," the turian officer told her soothingly.

"If-if they killed her, they might come after me! Oh whatdoidowhatdoido-?!"

"It'll be alright," the asari cop held up her hand placatingly. "We can help you. We'll make sure you're safe, okay?"

Meanwhile, in the crime scene, a human officer sifted through the desk before seeing what he was after. A hexagonal token with a symbol of an eye in the upper half and a four pointed star in the lower half. Perfect. He pocketed the token and finished searching before stepping outside.

"Hey Ubrect," the asari called. "Find anything?"

"Nothing at all, Careena," the man replied. "Nothing at all."

 _Contact Report: Geth Commando_

 _Compared to its standard brethren, the Commando has significantly more armor and is overall better made. Post-combat analysis of processing cores shows an order of magnitude more geth runtimes taking up residence in each unit. Morever, the unit possesses powerful communications equipment and appears to serve as an officer for the common geth trooper. Under their direction, the geth operate more as a unit rather than mindless combat drones._

 _The Commando has also demonstrated a proficiency for unusual combat tactics. One example is the usage of its ability to magnetize its feet to grab a grenade off a fallen comrade and fling it with accuracy at an entrenched enemy position. It was also capable of engaging Commander Shepard in close quarters for a short period of time, something so far unheard of for any enemy encountered._

 _Contact Report: Geth Crawler_

 _These massive units serve as both mobile artillery and forward assault units. They are just as effective in close range as they are from a distance. The particle beam cannon mounted on the head can adjust its spread for anti-armor or anti-infantry roles. But the Crawler's true weaponry is mobility. These units are relatively unhindered by roadblocks and barricades. They have been seen crushing enemies underfoot and ignoring all but the heaviest of weapons._

 **Yes, Thane is such a badass that even blind, disoriented and up against a guy who could casually splatter him across the floor in one hit, he still can fight and survive. Now to be fair, Kai Leng wasn't even trying. Still, an unaugmented fragile assassin who can dance with an Alliance Supersoldier? That takes skill.**

 **More geth units. And instead of just shooting through the garage door like in the game, the geth set up a three part ambush and waited until the squad was deep inside. Once again, geth being much smarter than BW let them be.**

 **Can anyone figure out the significance of that token?**

 **Read and review!**


	17. The enemy of my enemy

**And this is the end of the Feros mission. About half the people who guessed about the token are on the right track.**

 **Enjoy!**

Chapter 16

 **Feros**

Shepard stepped off the smoking ruin that was the walking artillery piece and dropped the overheated geth shotgun. "Good fucking riddance…" she breathed, wincing as her ribs protested the abuse from being punted almost eight meters by the colossal machine.

"One down, who knows how many more to go," Wrex noted.

"Thanks, I needed that reminder of how Saren has an army of these things left to deal with."

Liara dropped to her knees, exhausted from how much of her biotics she'd used in the fight.

"Nice job doctor."

"T-thanks, Commander."

Off to the side, Williams pushed her way out of the pile of concrete debris she'd ended up in, dusted her armor off, and repacked her grenade launcher. Then she joined the trio in walking over to Garrus and Tali's position.

"Oh hey, commander," the Spectre said. "I see you got an identical twin, or I have a really bad concussion."

"Don't move!" Tali ordered as she applied a bandage and hot compress.

"Wimp," Wrex chuckled. "The butcher got kicked across the room, and she's still walking. You just got hit by a firecracker."

"Oh give me a break!" Garrus protested. "Not all of us are supersoldiers here!"

"You saying that you can't keep up?" Shepard smirked and crossed her arms, enjoying the Spectre's torment.

"Oh I'll keep up as soon as she lets me up!" He paused. "That just went somewhere horrible, didn't it?"

"Why didn't you use your pulse grenade shot?" Liara asked.

"I did," Garrus grumbled. "It didn't do anything. The geth must have hardened themselves against EMP."

"You're good," Tali announced before helping the turian to his feet.

"Okay, now that we're no longer in imminent danger of resting in pieces, let's go see why there's such a big geth presence here," Shepard announced.

"Maybe this hole in the ground can get us around that barrier," Liara pointed out.

"Williams, hold the exit with the Tali and the Spectre."

Shepard was about to turn the corner of the tunnel she'd dropped into when she heard a distant sound. She held up a closed fist, listening hard until she made out the sound of nervous breathing.

"Who goes there?" She called.

A sharp intake. "Oh god you're human! Please help me!"

"Identify yourself," she ordered.

"Lizbeth Baynham! Get me out of here!"

Shepard nosed her rifle out into the hall. "Walk toward me. No sudden movements."

A mousy woman with shoulder length hair emerged from the darkness in the hallway. "Thank the lord, you're Alliance!"

"What are you doing here?" Shepard demanded.

"I was hiding from the geth when they attacked us. They killed everyone! The archaeologists, the other scientists, the test subjects-they're all gone!"

"Test subjects?" Liara asked.

"We were studying a new life form the Institute found in one of their dig sites. I-it's like a cross between a fungus and a plant, and it can control people somehow."

"Control people how?" the commander queried.

"It generates spores and pheromones that alter the mind. We were observing people under its influence when they attacked us."

"You used other people for experiments?!" Liara gasped in horror.

"They were probably condemned criminals ExoGeni brought in," Shepard answered. "Is that what the geth were after?"

"I-I guess?" Baynham shrugged helplessly. "We weren't working on anything else."

"Saren sent geth after the Rachni Queen because she knew something he wanted to know," Wrex chimed in. "Could be something similar here."

Shepard paused for a moment. "This plant thing you're studying, what did your test subjects do under its control?"

"They seemed to be organized like guardians. They became very aggressive toward our people approaching the thing."

"Would you say that this thing is sentient?"

"The word is 'sapient,' ma'am," the scientist corrected. "I don't have any firsthand experiences or observations with it, but from all accounts, our people seemed to think so."

"Where is it?"

The woman shrugged. "I don't know. It was above my clearance level. I wasn't allowed to go into the field. My superior was. I have her passkey."

"Are the systems in this place still up and running?"

"The basement has power, so I would assume so. The main terminal is back that way," Shepard turned around to follow the woman's gaze to a door in the corner. "but I saw some krogan heading up there."

"Krogan?" Wrex asked. "Are they working with the geth?"

"There she is!" a distant roar sounded. Lizbeth screamed and dived into the tunnel to avoid the hail of machine gun fire.

"I think that's a yes!" Shepard snarled as sighted her rifle on a krogan crest and pulled the trigger, unleashing a crimson beam that exploded the unfortunate alien's head in a steaming shower of gore.

Behind her, Liara curled her hand into a fist, building up a charge of biotic lightning, to the distinct discomfiture of Baynham huddled nearby, before launching the bolt at the second of four krogan.

The krogan's battlecry became a shriek of untold agony as the bolt of dark energy discharged into his body. Parts of his ribcage warped and twisted in all manner of directions, shattering into pieces. The resulting internal pressure differential from the released and chaotic gravitational field imploded or exploded his primary, secondary and tertiary internal organs. Part of the krogan's liver actually shot out through his unarmored thigh, the tissue it passed through ripped apart through biotic force. One section of the armor on his chest spiked inward nearly twenty centimeters, skewering a lung and denying the unfortunate soldier the ability to gasp for help in the last four seconds of his life before his chest cavity simply imploded.

As his two remaining horrified comrades stared at the quivering ball of armor and flesh that was once a krogan, Wrex changed the shot configuration of his shotgun and fired three powerful slugs, two into the chest and head of one warrior and one at the hip of the other, blowing off the limb completely.

"Amateurs," he growled as he made his way over. "Even the greenest pups should know better than to stand in the open."

The last one was howling in pain, futilely grasping at the stump near his pelvis when Wrex planted nearly one hundred and ninety kilograms of angry krogan on the bleeding area.

"You smell like medicine, pup. Where did Saren find you?"

"Grah! You think I'll tell you anything?"

"Whether you tell me or not decides whether I finish you off with this…" the old krogan hefted the shotgun menacingly before stowing it and pulling out a wickedly sharp knife. "or this. Guns are fast. Knives are slow. You want me to show you how slow they are, pup?"

"D-do what you want…" the young krogan snarled defiantly, voice growing weaker as blood loss started to kick in. "…the battlemaster will win in the end."

"Battlemaster?!" Wrex rammed the knife to the hilt where the equivalent of a krogan kidney would be. "You think of Saren Arterius as a battlemaster?!" he demanded over renewed screams of agony. "You don't know the meaning of the word!"

"If you were planning to get anything useful out of him," Shepard cut in, "it's not going to happen now. He'll be too far gone to give you anything."

Wrex looked over, a dangerous glint in his eyes, and then turned back to the crippled warrior before slowly and deliberately inching the knife out. "If you're lucky, you'll bleed out. If not, you'll heal just enough to die of thirst. Let's see your precious 'battlemaster' get you out of that."

The krogan groaned before suddenly pulling himself upright with a roar and snatching up his rifle. "Die!"

Another stream of red hit the weapon, slagging the electronics and rendering the weapon a red-hot paperweight. "After you," Shepard answered as the unfortunate krogan howled in pain once more.

 _"Sounds like you're having fun down there, Shepard, but you might want to hurry up before the geth get to the entrance up here"_ Garrus called. _"The flyboys are having a hard time keeping them back for our exit."_

"We'll be quick about it. Just a small pit stop at the central terminal for the building, and we all get out of here."

 **Tartarus**

"Your work is greatly appreciated," Harper was saying as Dr. Core walked into the office.

 _"A girl can have too much flattery, Jack,"_ Morinth replied coyly. _"And speaking of girls, when is Shepard going to be around again?"_

"I'm sure you know we can't tell you that."

 _"Killjoy,"_ she mock pouted through the line.

"Finish cleaning up your trail, and we should have a new assignment for you soon."

 _"Out of curiosity, how's my incentive coming along?"_

"I haven't been kept abreast of the latest developments," the director admitted. "We are working to confirm our hypothesis, but without access to the temple, it's proven quite difficult to find others like yourself to test."

 _"Well that's a shame,"_ the ardat yakshi trailed off in some disappointment. _"Still, thanks for going the extra length for me. I know you didn't really have to take me in and train me."_

"I am a man of my word. We will help free your sisters, Morinth."

 _"Just once, can't you call me 'Jack?"_

"That would lend itself to confusion. Until next time."

 _"Killjoy."_

"You know, if you played along with her on that issue, it would practically guarantee her loyalty to humanity," Eva noted. "She's all but forsaken ties to the Asari as a whole because of us."

"Perhaps, but betrayal is not to be forgiven lightly, doctor," Harper replied. "Those who switch sides once can do so again."

"Trust me on this, at least. You've read her profile. You know exactly why she's willing to work with us. We've done more for her than anyone else in her four centuries of life. And while she is much older than any human alive, you have to remember that for an Asari, she's in her younger years. They tend to be more trusting."

"I shall take that as serious advice rather than a crack about my age," the man chuckled.

"You know we're about the same age, right?"

"Point made, doctor," Harper raised his hands in mock surrender. "What brings you down here today?"

"Well first is a quick report on Agent Leng's mission. We've pretty much ended any possible threat the Hegemony Remnant could have posed to us, though at the risk of tremendous backlash if our involvement in Adogene's destruction should ever become public. The information we retrieved from Riyaan Har'al's computer records led us to a whole network of other sympathizers. We're locating them so our field agents can neutralize them for good."

"And what of the chances that Har'al's death will alert them to go to ground?"

Core waved it off. "Minimal. Agent Ubrect and his team planted evidence that this was a corporate blackmail case that backfired on her. Happens all the time there. Evidence points to some nobody on Illium. He'll 'solve' the case and close the book on it."

"I see."

"Second is a touch and go with the Quarian representatives. We just finished a distance interface with their geth experts. You remember Shepard's contact reports on the new geth units?"

"I'm going to be presumptuous and assume that the Quarians had never seen these either."

"Correct. They've had multiple instances of hostile contact with the geth, but this is the first time they've ever seen the geth innovate like this."

"Curious."

"And you want to know the funny part? It appears that they started making minor changes and tweaks to their units right around the time we showed up on the galactic scene. More specifically, when the commander went down to Torfan to make an example of the slavers who took her brother. And the real kicker is that Saren was all but missing in action for about three years prior, and a year afterward."

"So around that time, Saren made contact with his geth allies," Harper finished.

"I definitely wouldn't bet against it."

"So now we have some idea of how long it takes the geth to innovate. That was ten years, on the outside, for the geth to conceptualize these units, design and prototype them."

"We can't really make much use of that information, but it's an interesting tidbit of information. Maybe have our experts on the Citadel try and look up any hints of where Saren was during that time?"

"Do it."

"And lastly is the preliminary evaluation for Lieutenant Commander Alenko," the doctor said, bringing up the lab results and showing her tablet to the director.

"Interesting…"

"I'd say he's another good candidate for Jaeger enhancements, wouldn't you?"

"Only if he agrees to it, doctor."

"Do you really think so little of me that you wouldn't put it past me to force him into it?"

"No, but you have been known to be quite persuasive."

Core swatted him on the arm. "You can be a bit of an asshole, you know that?"

"Consider it a holdover from my college days," Harper smirked.

 **Feros**

"…so it turns out, the geth actually didn't harden themselves completely. They jury rigged a counter to my pulse grenades," Garrus said.

"The geth overcharged their kinetic barriers at the exact same time the pulse went off, creating a separate EMF field that overpowered the pulse," Tali explained. "The downside for them is that it disables their kinetic barriers while the internal system cools down."

"We're about to land at Weigh Station, ma'am," the pilot called.

"And before you ask," Garrus continued. "we confirmed it while we held down the exit. Now it just takes two of them to drop a bunch of geth."

"Good to know," Shepard said as the Skyranger touched down. "Nice flying, Major. Sorry it took a while."

"Just a few scratches ma'am. Nothing the boys in the shop can't fix."

The ramp opened, revealing two Asari and two humans at the foot.

"Doctor Gen'aris!" Liara breathed in surprise.

"Well if it isn't my favorite student," the older Asari called. "Didn't expect to see you with an Alliance response team."

"Lizbeth!" the woman on the pad blew past the commander and crushed the scientist in a bear hug. "Thank god you're safe!"

"Mom…can't…breathe…"

Shepard's mouth curled upward in amusement as she looked back before turning to face the other human.

"Ma'am," the man greeted, snapping to attention and saluting. "Captain Ethan Jeong, Office of Special Investigations, liaison officer to ExoGeni."

"Commander Shepard of the Normandy," she returned the salute. "What happened?"

"We were attacked out of nowhere, ma'am. The geth ship dropped their forces at headquarters before our perimeter could react. My XO, Lieutenant Hanson managed to get out an SOS before we lost contact. Then the geth showed up at the test site. Things got confusing when it turned into a three-way between us, the geth and the test subjects."

"A three-way battle?" Shepard asked. "How were the test subjects fighting?"

"Sergeant Benz couldn't destroy the outpost armory station before he had to pull his boys back. The test subjects must have raided it. Laser armaments, ma'am. Nothing exotic."

"At least we have that going for us." She paused in thought. "Don't all the prisoners have explosive collars?"

"They neutralized them somehow," the captain shrugged. "At least the older test subjects did. The latest ones introduced to that thing died when we pressed the kill switch."

"How many men do you have left?"

"Half a platoon, ma'am. No heavy ordnance. We'd be slaughtered trying to retake the test site. I was planning on calling for an orbital bombardment to contain it."

"You can't just fire on the site!" Doctor Gen'aris snapped. "That's priceless history you're talking about!"

"Ma'am, my primary concern is preventing an outbreak of…whatever that thing is. We don't know how big or dangerous it will get. Better to be safe and burn it off. Besides, didn't you say this entire planet is a dig site?"

"What if we go in and evaluate it, Captain?" Shepard cut in before the outraged Asari could try and attack the soldier for such sacrilege.

"You're welcome to it, ma'am. Just be careful."

"Did you just volunteer us for another suicidal mission?" Garrus called incredulously.

"You don't have to take my orders, remember?"

* * *

"Whoa, this was one hell of a firefight," Garrus noted, staring at the geth parts and human corpses that littered the entry way.

"That doesn't look human," Wrex said, indicating a chewed up humanoid torso that looked disturbingly gray.

Liara inched close, looking it over. "Definitely not human," she confirmed, her face twisted in disgust.

"Tali, can you take a look at the test subjects exploding collars?" Shepard asked. "I want to know why they didn't work."

Tali scanned a fallen test subject with her omnitool, then tapped it before looking up. "I'm not sure if these readings are right, but it seems that something 'grew' into the collars, interfering with the receivers."

"Lizbeth did say it was something between a plant and a fungus," Liara added.

"There are some chemical traces around the edges where the collar casing comes together, almost like corrosion."

"Figures," Shepard muttered. "Means we can't just grab a transmitter, boost the signal and reactivate the kill switch."

"If you want them all dead, it looks like the geth are doing the job for you, Butcher," Wrex commented.

"They're also getting closer to destroying the plant thing. We need to double time it."

The team raced up the left side, through the door and over to an elevator.

"Come on, hurry up!" Shepard growled as the doors slowly inched open.

Once it disgorged the team onto the lower levels, they raced down the stairwell, stopping when they heard the telltale sound of geth rifle fire.

"More of those commando geth," Garrus whispered, zeroing his rifle on one.

"Kelah, there's an army of those bosh'tets out there!" Tali breathed as she saw a laser cut down a geth that stayed out of cover a moment too long.

"They haven't spotted us yet," the Commander said. "Let's set up behind them."

The geth advanced further down the open area, giving the team time to pick and choose good elevated positions to fire from.

"Alright, Garrus will start it off. Get ready."

Garrus noted the three geth commandos in view, sighting his rifle in the small of the back of the lead unit. "Three commandos. Targeting lead unit." he said, deliberately avoiding the use of his radio.

"I count seventeen X-Rays," Shepard called. "Targeting rear commando unit."

"Targeting middle commando unit," Williams growled.

Liara nervously aimed her rifle at a cluster of geth pinned down near a large crate when she noticed something. "One of the people in the back with the test subjects is an Asari!"

"Save it for later," Shepard answered.

Tali made a final check on her updated locator program before taking a deep breath and aiming her shotgun downrange with Wrex.

 _Come on,_ Garrus thought. _Just hold still for one-there!_ "Fire!"

The three geth commandos were shredded within seconds of each other. Shepard's target lost a leg, the armor plating failing to prevent the laser from slagging the servomotor, dropping the geth to the ground where a follow-up shot went through its head cluster. Williams's shot caught the commando sideways, passing through the armpit area and into the cluster of wires and electronics contained within the geth chassis. Depowered, the unit dropped like a stone. The lead geth was actually hit from two directions. One of the test subjects further down managed to tag it in the chest at the same time Garrus lanced it in the back. The unit collapsed against its cover with two holes in its core processor.

Caught by surprise, the remaining geth troopers turned to try and meet the ambush, but there was nowhere to run. With Tali's guidance, the three laser-wielding shooters mercilessly eliminated every geth trapped in the open before Wrex and Liara moved in to neutralize the rest.

"Test subjects in sight," Garrus called. "I got a mark on the Asari."

"Wait!" Liara interrupted. "They're signaling something!"

The test subjects seemed to be lowering their purloined weapons and waving at the team.

"The hell is going on?" Shepard wondered.

"You are with the humans?" The nearest test subject asked the bewildered Asari scientist. "The old growth wishes to speak to them."

* * *

Shepard walked up to the odd Asari. "Who are you?"

 **"This one was a thrall to the leader of the machines,"** she answered. **"I am the old growth. I speak through her. And you are the pursuer."**

" 'Old growth?' You're the thing that ExoGeni was studying?"

 **"Yes. Your enemy, Saren, he desired my knowledge. We traded. And then he betrayed."**

"What did he want?"

 **"The last great creation of those you call 'Prothean.' The Conduit. The desperation of their race."**

"You saw the Protheans?" Liara asked. "How old are you?"

 **"Eons passed since my creation. Many races have come and gone on this planet. Many cycles. But I have remained. This planet is mine, granted by the creators."**

"I think that's a little arrogant for you to say that you own an entire planet," Garrus noted dryly.

The Asari laughed. **"My form stretches across the planet. You cannot comprehend my scope. I see all and know all that occurs. Many thralls, many hands, many eyes."**

"Well I guess orbital bombardment is out of the question," Shepard muttered sardonically.

"Who created you?" Tali queried.

 **"They are the manipulators. They who toy with life itself. I was simply one of many of their creations, one of many failures."** The Asari nodded at the Commander. **"She shares their gift. The aspect. The voice of the mind. As do I."**

"A psionic plant," Garrus thought aloud. "Now I've seen everything."

"You obviously don't just want to chat with us," Shepard said, recentering the discussion. "What do you want?"

 **"I was created as a weapon against the abominations. Those called Reapers. I sensed their taint in this thrall before you, just as I sensed it in the one you call Saren. I have cleansed it. Your race is mighty, and my purpose is unfulfilled."**

"The planet-spanning plant monster that can possess people wants to help us? I don't think you're doing this just out of the goodness of your…whatever the equivalent of your heart is."

 **"Vengeance. The creators left me to obsolescence. I was discarded as weak and a failure. Saren dealt poorly with me. I would see him punished for his insolence. And your race, while frail and weak-minded as individuals, is one I can ill afford to make an enemy of."**

"I can't promise that your purpose will be fulfilled, but Saren is going down, one way or another."

 **"Acceptable. I will grant you my memory. In return, you will kill the betrayer."**

"You sure about this, Butcher?" Wrex growled.

"If what this plant thing is saying is right, Saren's just a sock puppet for the Reapers," Shepard replied. "It backstabs us, we can just wipe out the planet it's on. We'll have bigger things to fry, literally."

 _Codex: Disassembler Nanites_

 _The technological boogeyman of the Alliance's arsenal, it's efficiency is matched only by the horrifying effects on targeted physiology. In the process of reproducing, the nanites liberate large quantities of iron, copper, carbon and silica from their targets to produce additional nanites. This process results in "infected" individuals boiling from the inside out as heat from the chemical reactions builds up within. Following death by heatstroke or organ failure, the "infected" will be decomposed rapidly over several hours, often leaving behind skin and little else._

 _Oxygen is used as a catalyst for these reactions. Consequently, the nanites are particularly fond of targeting the respiratory system and mucosal surfaces. This also means that respiratory actions such as breathing, coughing or sneezing can spray nanites into the air, to the obvious detriment of those nearby._

 _In large numbers, airborne nanites can become self-sustaining swarms that derive energy from nearby EMF sources such as radio towers. This limits their spread to unpopulated areas, but is devastating in a megalopolis like the planet Kharshan._

 _Footage from the attack on Kharshan shows that heat or incendiaries, far from destroying nanite swarms, makes them more active. Burning the bodies of nanite victims is counterproductive unless done in a fully self-contained area._

 _Codex: Particle-beam weaponry_

 _The Citadel's answer to the Alliance plasma weapons, the only real significant difference between particle-beam cannons and plasma projectors is scale. The Citadel military forces lack a power source of sufficient energy density to power all other functions of a ship and sustain the accelerated stream of ions._

 _To compensate, Salarian engineers have applied mass effect fields to the accelerated gas, minimizing the energy needed to achieve the near-lightspeed velocity for the particle stream. They have also focused the stream, lowering the spread of damage but increasing the depth of penetration._

 _In various tests, the new particle-beam cannons have proven significantly more effective and power-efficient against shipboard kinetic barriers than mass driver weapons. However, power draw requirements and the narrow spread of damage have by necessity mandated both weapon systems be mounted on those ships with room to accommodate. Current military doctrine is to use the particle-beam cannon to target the core reactor of the ship, and if needed, switch to the mass driver once barriers have been disabled._

 **Hmm, who are these mysterious creators the Thorian speaks of? Can you guess?**

 **According to Canon, the Thorian stretches across the entire planet of Feros. The idea that you actually kill it by focusing on one small section is ludicrous to the extreme. Once again, BW logic for you.**

 **My hope is to finish the Mass Effect 1 section before New Years. But with my workload piling up, I'll need plenty of motivation. Please help me reach 300 reviews by New Years Eve.**


	18. The gloves come off

**I have something VERY special planned for the next chapter, but you get to see a hint of it at the end here.**

 **Enjoy!**

 **Edit: Thank you 5 Coloured Walker for pointing out that I forgot the minus sign on the power of 10.**

Chapter 17

 **The Normandy**

Shepard whimpered pitifully, propped on one of Dr. Chakwas's medical beds and clutching her pounding skull.

"Is she going to be alright, Karin?" Liara asked from nearby.

"The Commander's stubbornness has allowed her to deal with plenty of painful predicaments in the past," the doctor replied. "without the benefit of my medical knowledge to ease her distress. I daresay that this instance will be no different."

"You're enjoying this…" the red-head groaned.

"I did warn you against pushing yourself too hard. You will recall ignoring my advice and not allowing yourself to rest. You have been recklessly interfacing with alien psionics and biology without stopping in for me to look you over and make sure you weren't suffering any impairment."

"I can't take this anymore! I can't make sense of these memories in my head! And I can't get rid of them!"

"Commander, I could meld with you to try and help figure out what they mean," Liara offered tentatively.

"Don't be stubborn again by rejecting other people's aid, Commander," Chakwas added sternly. "That's what brought you to this point."

Shepard cracked open one eye in a baleful glare at the amused medical officer before conceding. "Fine…I'll do it."

"Would you like me to give you some privacy, Dr. T'Soni?"

"No no, it's alright," Liara said with a slight blush. "This isn't the intimate kind of meld."

"Let's just get this over with," Shepard growled, heaving herself upright into a sitting position.

"Okay Commander," Liara continued, gently placing her hand on either side of the other woman's head. "please just relax…and embrace Eternity!"

* * *

Pressly eyed the message from comms, clearly unhappy with the orders, but knowing the futility of lodging anything resembling an objection. "Joker, you copy this message?"

 _"Aye aye, sir."_

"Get us to the rendezvous."

 _"You got it."_

"What's eating you?" Garrus asked as he exited the elevator.

"Orders, and the fact that the commander's out of commission right now."

"Another lead?"

"No," Pressly bit out. "Apparently, command thinks we need to take the gloves off, so we're going in to swap out our ship armaments and armory."

"That means you get to use the better guns. What's so bad about that?"

Pressly thought for a moment. "I'll put it this way, mister Vakarian: the Alliance does not trust other races. We are careful, some would say to the point of paranoia, to keep our best equipment out of sight so no one else can see it. That's been our policy for dealing with your people all this time. And it's kept us safe. But now people in high places have decided that the downside of letting you people have a look at our best hardware is less of a concern than the potential threat we're going to need that hardware to deal with. And I don't like it. I don't like not knowing what's out there, threatening my people to the point where we have to accept a negative tradeoff."

"You don't trust us, and you don't want to, but now you have to. Is that it?" The turian summed up. "Fair enough. I'd feel the same way in your position."

"It's my institutional distrust and my worries over what threat is so great that we need this firepower now."

"No real point in worrying about it until you see it. Your superiors made the decision to give you the good stuff. They probably think you can handle whatever it is, or they would have given you other orders."

Pressly sighed. "I suppose. I'm just a lowly lieutenant though. This is the commander's job."

"Someday, you'll be the one wearing that rank, right? Better get used to it."

"Thank you for that advice," the acting commander replied dryly.

"That's free. Sarcasm costs extra."

Pressly shook his head and walked off toward the cockpit, leaving the Spectre with little to do but head to his quarters. On the way, he ran into Tali.

"You know, I figured you'd be nosing around the Engineering section."

"Just wondering what I got myself into," Tali muttered. "All I wanted was to maybe get some Alliance help for the Fleet, and now I'm involved in some ancient conspiracy with prehistoric monsters and enemies coming back from the dead."

"It is a bit crazy when you put it like that," Garrus agreed.

"We're overturning pretty much everything we thought we knew about the galaxy. "The Rachni just wanted to be alone, the Commander just made a deal with an ancient mind-controlling plant monster, and there's a rogue turian running around with a giant alien dreadnought that Liara's mother said is actually controlling him looking for some Prothean creation!" Tali threw up her hands. "I don't know what to think anymore! What's next? The geth were provoked into attacking us and driving us off Rannoch?"

"You saw that thing with Benezia?"

"I have the camera footage. There's not much else to look at around here since the Alliance bosh'tets won't let me see their engines," Tali grumbled in annoyance. A technological masterpiece that surpassed what the rest of the galaxy used, and she wasn't allowed to examine it.

"Well you might have a chance to see them soon," Garrus told her. "Apparently, this ship has orders to go in for a quick overhaul. Their command is giving them the big guns. Those will be pretty interesting."

"Men and their obsession with blowing things up," Tali sniffed. "Guns aren't nearly as impressive as a ship core and engines."

"Hey, who knows what crazy tech they have on those things? You might get to check out their plasma weapons."

"Plasma is just energized matter. The hard part is scale. The Alliance has the energy to make plasma on a huge scale. That comes from their drive core. Which is one of the reasons I'd love to look at it so I can see how they can generate so much power."

"Well," Garrus leaned in conspiratorially. "you didn't hear it from me, but there's rumors that it's because the Alliance uses a special element called Elerium."

"WHAT?!" Tali whipped her head around so fast her neck audibly cracked, making the turian wince slightly. Before the Spectre could straighten up, the quarian girl had both hands latched onto his arms and yanked him down closer. "Tell me everything you know about this!" she demanded in a manic tone.

 **Unknown Location, Covert Staging Area docks**

 _"You're looking much better than you have this past month, Commander,"_ Harper noted.

"Dr. T'Soni helped a bit," Shepard admitted grudgingly. "Those alien visions were driving me insane."

 _"So you finally learned to let others give you a hand instead of stubbornly persisting on your own,"_ Dr. Core chimed in. _"And here I never thought I'd see the day when the proud commander learned that lesson."_

"Laugh it up, doc," the woman growled.

 _"On to more important matters then,"_ the director continued. _"Immediately after the installation of the Fusion Lance and plasma projectors, you'll be heading to a planet called Virmire."_

"Wait a goddamn minute, did you say 'plasma _projectors?_ ' I thought we could only mount those on dreadnoughts!"

 _"We've made a few recent breakthroughs in weapons development, Commander,"_ Core explained. _"The University of British Columbia back on Earth has come up with a new high-temperature superconductor that can operate at higher temperatures than our current ones. This allows us to overcharge our ionizers without endangering the electrical components through superconductivity failure, and the plasma is much hotter than normal. Because of this extra energy, we can downscale the weapon output and begin fitting them onto smaller craft like the Normandy."_

 _"The plasma projector is intended as your close-quarters option in space combat, or an all-purpose atmospheric support option,"_ Harper added. _"You should be aware that the projector needs to refill its atmospheric ballast tanks more often in order to sustain operations. The staff will also be updating your ship's firing computers to accommodate it. In fully automatic mode, your ship should be capable of auto-targeting and firing in short bursts to intercept enemy craft, which emulates the old plasma cannon armament."_

"As long as it's been field-tested and doesn't blow out on me, I'll be happy to put it to use."

 _"Rear Admiral Shepard and Admiral Hackett insisted on observing the tests themselves."_

"Figures that mom would do that," Shepard muttered.

 _"Now as to Virmire, the Council evidently sent a team to investigate before giving you the lead on Feros. They lost contact in the past two days."_

"Does the Citadel know we're heading over there now?"

 _"They will know soon enough. By all accounts, their frigate was shot down in orbit. You'll search for survivors and investigate to see what is so important to Saren and the geth down there."_

"How about our investigation into everything the Citadel has on the Protheans?"

 _"Unfortunately, our lack of experts in Prothean studies makes it very difficult for us to make headway. We'll have to rely on Dr. T'Soni and her knowledge."_

"She's looking through her notes and archives right now. I'll check on her right after this."

 _"Shoes are starting to drop, Commander,"_ Eva noted. _"Saren has to be feeling the pressure now that the whole galaxy is hunting him and his operations are being disrupted by you and your team. He'll look to accelerate his plans. We need to know what his end goal is and cut him off."_

"Sir," Shepard spoke hesitantly. "the visions I had showed aliens being destroyed by giant machines. Every time, I heard the word 'Reapers.' The Rachni Queen alluded to them, and the plant thing also called them 'Reapers.' And Benezia told us that Saren's dreadnought isn't a dreadnought. It's a Reaper itself that's controlling him, and it controlled her. What if Saren isn't the big threat and he's just a puppet for the Reapers?"

 _"We will cross that bridge when we come to it,"_ Harper answered. _"Don't mistake this as a dismissal, Shepard. I agree with you that there is something more going on here, but the most immediate threat is Saren himself and his mad plan."_

"The plant thing said he was looking for something called the 'Conduit,' the last creation of the Protheans. The Rachni Queen called it a 'pathway.' "

 _"What it is matters less than where. But at least you have something to go off of while you search the planet. We will do our best on this end to dig up more information. You have your orders."_

"Understood sir."

No sooner had Shepard stepped out of the communications room did she hear a scream of frustration from a certain blue archaeologist.

"Augh! Nothing in the archives, nothing in my notes, nothing at all about the last creation of the Protheans!"

"Great set of lungs you got there," the red head noted dryly.

"This isn't funny, Commander!" Liara snapped. "I KNOW that planet the Rachni were on is familiar. I just-ugh! What is it?! I should have the answer already!"

"Maybe take a break? Stressing over a question doesn't help. When I was studying for my Masters Degree in Engineering, I found it helped a lot to walk away, unwind for a bit, and then come back to the problem."

Liara bit off an irate response. "The sooner I figure out what planet that is, the sooner we can take out Saren."

"But you're not getting anywhere, and we're not leaving for another thirty-six hours while the new weapons are being installed."

Liara sighed. "Fine."

Leaving the Commander to do her rounds and inspect the new armaments, she found herself on the bridge where a few idle crewmembers were engaged in conversation.

"-how likely is it that they have all these things in one attractive package? Blue alien space babes with huge racks and great figures? It's like someone designed them to meet every single fetish out there!"

"Yeah, you're right. Plus, there's that flexibility you see in the vids on their Extranet. Wish my girlfriend back home could pull off some of those moves."

"And tentacles. Don't forget the tentacles on their heads."

"Those aren't tentacles you moron."

"Well whatever they are, they're hot. I'm telling you, a race of sexy blue alien chicks like that has to be made that way on purpose."

"Excuse me!" Liara yelled. "I object to the implication that my race exists solely to fulfill people's sexual fantasies!" Realizing what she'd just yelled out, she clapped both hands over her mouth, mortified.

"Alright boys," _Oh goddess, she heard that_. "no more eyeballing the 'sexy blue alien chick.' Even if she does have a nice ass, she's our guest here," Shepard lightly reprimanded with a smirk.

"Who's got a nice ass?" Garrus asked as he left the ship armory, clutching a shiny new plasma sniper rifle.

"Kill me now…" Liara whimpered.

 **Virmire**

"You sure these freqs are right?" Shepard asked while the Skyranger shot down toward the surface.

 _"Absolutely ma'am,"_ Pressly replied. _"Captain Anderson and General Summers got them from the Council. If the STG team is still alive, we should be able to reach their location following their distress signal."_

"By all accounts, their frigate was shot down," Garrus noted. "It'd be a good idea to keep your distance from the planet and avoid unnecessary communications so the anti-air can't go for a repeat performance."

 _"I'll take that under advisement, sir."_

"Holy shit!" the copilot yelped suddenly.

"What?" Shepard unbuckled and made her way to the cockpit.

"Look at that damage, ma'am," the major at the controls pointed out as the Skyranger hovered near the wreckage. "That's half their frigate gone."

"I don't see any other damage markings," Tali chimed in, easing her way forward. "Whatever shot it down did it in one hit."

"Let me see!" Garrus demanded. "You know, considering the shape that's in, I'll be really surprised if anyone survived that landing."

"Pressly, are you getting this image?" Shepard called.

 _"Affirmative ma'am. This looks an awful lot like the kind of damage our Fusion Lances can do."_

"Okay, tell Joker he's definitely keeping back until we can find out where the ground emplacements are."

 _"Copy that."_

The copilot was looking at his instruments in the meantime. "Ma'am, we're being interrogated by a signal on one of the frequencies we were told about. Triangulation of the source shows it's coming from inside the ship."

"STG protocol," Garrus explained. "The transponder responds to passive signal searching to prevent the enemy from following the survivors. Respond with this code," he ordered.

"Comm frequency received." the copilot announced after a moment.

"Punch it in," Shepard ordered before taking the radio. "This is Commander Shepard of the Alliance calling Captain Kirrahe. Authentication eight two seven. Anyone on this net, respond."

After a few minutes, the radio erupted. _"This is Captain Kirrahe. We are about ten kilomters northwest of the crash site. No geth nearby, but we don't know how long that'll last."_

"On our way."

Following the signal, the Skyranger soon touched down in a small makeshift camp and the team disembarked.

"I'm surprised anyone survived that crash," Shepard noted upon introducing herself to the salarian captain.

"That makes eight of us," the commando replied.

"Any idea what Saren is doing here?"

Kirrahe glanced at Wrex nervously. "Can we go over this in private?"

"Go over what?" Wrex growled, noticing the wary glances from the salarian team.

"Wrex, just promise the nice salarian that you won't tear his head off over whatever it is," Garrus answered.

Wrex shrugged. "If it's what I think it is, don't worry about it."

Kirrahe looked at Shepard as if he was about to say something else, then thought better of it. "Saren has found a way to bypass the Genophage. There's a big facility devoted to doing just that."

"I figured," Wrex rumbled.

"Then you're probably not going to like the fact that we have to destroy it." Kirrahe braced himself for the impending outrage.

"Nah, I'm good with it."

"Say what?" Garrus asked incredulously.

"You're fine with us wiping out the place?" Shepard queried.

"Anything that Saren is involved in isn't worth it," Wrex answered. "because he picked a fight with the Alliance. He's not a scientist, and I seriously doubt he actually 'cured' it. Those four krogan we killed on Feros all smelled the same, like clones. Saren wants shock troops, not a free krogan race."

"You didn't say any of this before," Shepard noted.

"Didn't think it mattered. Now are we done talking? Because I think that if we found your little camp, so will the geth. If we're going to take out that building, we better get moving."

"The problem is how we'll do that," Kirrahe interjected. "Without orbital support, we'd have to infiltrate and set the reactors to overload, or drag a bomb inside."

"We have orbital support," Shepard countered. "The Normandy can fire on the base. We'll just have to disable the anti-air countermeasures so it can close in."

"Easier said than done."

"You got a better plan?" Garrus demanded.

"Unfortunately, no."

* * *

Meanwhile in a command structure, several geth chattered electronically with one another.

/Unit in orbit. Signature = Alliance Normandy./

/Target in range?/

/Negative./

/New unit location = enemy crash site./

/Unit movement. Estimation: located crash survivors. Probability: 87%./

/Enemy interference pending./

/Unacceptable. Interception Force deploying./

/Query: Certainty of success?/

/Estimation: 15%. Known force: Commander Erin Shepard, Alliance./

/ **INITIATING DIRECT INTERVENTION PROTOCOL.** /

A large heavily armored geth, almost two heads taller than its standard brethren, began whining as dormant servomotors and circuitry powered up. A blue aura formed before fading into a more subdued hue around the unit. As it stood up, a regular geth platform handed it an odd rifle, which it attached to its back. Finally, the head cluster lit up and the unit marched to the door.

/ **CERTAINTY OF SUCCESS: 92%.** /

 **Meta joke for the win. Poor Liara.**

 **And a sneak peak at a bigger and meaner geth unit. Wonder what improvements this one has.**

 **Now I would like to readdress the scene I wrote for the destruction of Adogene.**

 **I have gone back to do research on Bioware's Codex regarding the Mass Effect. The verdict, Bioware actually was consistent with their physics, so my apologies for that.**

 **But that actually does mean that the destruction scene is accurate. How? Let me explain.**

 **Mass Effect weapons work by shaving sand grain sized bits off an ammo block, enveloping it in a Mass Effect Field, and accelerating it to a fraction of C.**

 **As an example, a very fine grain of sand at about .063mm in diameter has a mass of 3.5*10^-10 kg. According to Einstein's law of energy, the absolute max kinetic energy that grain of sand could have (traveling at lightspeed) is 31.46 MJ.**

 **For comparison, a 5.56 Nato has a muzzle energy of about 1.796 kJ.**

 **Considering that the Large Hadron Collider takes about 20-30 minutes to accelerate a particle from 0 to lightspeed, I think it's safe to say that Mass Effect rifles don't achieve anywhere near that speed.**

 **Now I'll be generous. With kinetic barriers and armor improvements, I can see that maybe accelerating to 2% of lightspeed could be reasonable with the Mass Effect. The muzzle energy would be around 6.29 kJ, slightly more than half the energy of a .50 BMG round.**

 **The thing about this, however, is that this all violates the law of Conservation of Energy.**

 **In a Closed System, E initial must be equal to E final. The particle has negligible mass when accelerated, but when that mass effect envelope disappears, it should lose velocity. By a lot. M1*(V1)^2 = M2*(V2)^2. Since M initial is less than M final, V initial must be much greater than V final.**

 **Instead, however, the physics as described in the Codex allow that particle to actually GAIN kinetic energy, because it does not lose speed when it regains mass on impact with the target.**

 **That is the hidden part of the Codex explanation of Mass Effect Weaponry. It is also consistent with how I described that cargo ship slamming into Adogene. When the ship slammed into the planet, the envelope drops and the ship should have lost velocity. Instead, it gained energy in a manner consistent with Bioware's physics.**

 **Sorry for the Physics Rant. I just wanted to get that off my chest.**

 **Review!**


	19. Man vs Machine

**And finally, the end of Virmire. We're almost to the end of ME1, people.**

 **Can you recognize the shout-outs?**

Chapter Eighteen

 **Virmire**

Shepard and the team dropped into the outside courtyard surrounding the base. "Remember, we need to take out any AA guns and clear the blast zone so the Normandy can blow the place to kingdom come."

"My team will go after the generators," Kirrahe chimed in. "I recommend your people destroy the base communications and sensor arrays so the guns can't target beyond their own in-built capabilities."

"You sure you'll be able to manage that on your own?" Garrus asked. "The last time we dealt with the geth, they had some pretty nasty units."

"They have been fighting you," the salarian pointed out. "but not us. STG does not rely on brute force."

"Garrus, set up an overwatch position," Shepard ordered. "Tali, get ready to run that program. We have the heavy ordnance, so we can distract them to take some heat off."

Garrus picked his position carefully before settling in, his finger itching to try out the plasma sniper rifle he'd been given. His scope zoomed into the nearby watchtower. "Two snipers on overwatch," he called as he panned around. "And a Crawler platform,"

"Liara, that's one's yours," the Commander noted.

"R-right," the scientists stammered, grabbing one of the six metal discs from her backpack and surrounding it with a familiar blue glow.

"There's bound to be some more troops to back them up," Wrex put in. "The geth probably saw us looking over that wreckage. They have to know we'll be coming here."

"That's our job," Shepard replied. "You, me, and Williams are the front line."

Wrex shrugged and readied his shotgun. "Works for me."

After a tense few minutes, Garrus heard a beep from his omnitool. "They're set up, Commander."

"Start the music."

Garrus sighted the first sniper, centering the holographic reticule where its processor core would be, and then pulled the trigger.

The front section of the rifle slid back slightly, an internal armature moving into a "film" of plasma sustained inside the weapon, capturing a segment of it inside the field. The field compressed the plasma into a "round" about one-eighth its original volume. Then the front section moved forward again as the internal magnetic rails activated, sending the plasma forward at nearly one thousand two hundred meters per second.

The plasma round should have merely pierced through the geth. Instead, a curious interaction took place as the geth platform's internal capacitors discharged from the shock. The newly released electrical energy conducted through the plasma, shocking the entire unit and overheating the internal capacitors to the critical point. The geth platform exploded from the inside, throwing its partner off balance.

Garrus whistled slightly as he fired another shot at the other geth before caressing the rifle. "Oh baby, where have you been all my life?"

A door on the nearby building opened up, and several metal shapes zoomed out towards the team.

"Ballers!" Shepard called.

"I got 'em!" Wrex answered before using his biotics to take the lead unit and abruptly send it flying backward into two others, crushing the delicate turret mechanisms.

Williams scowled through her rifle scope as she observed the baller weaving left and right before she fired. The plasma flew straight and true, impacting the front of the top plate and splashing over the delicate targeting sensors, slagging the lenses.

Tali saw her opportunity, quickly hacking the blinded baller and feeding new targeting information to the hijacked unit. The baller turned around and hosed its comrades with minigun fire, disrupting their charge.

Liara saw the Crawler's head-mounted gun begin to glow. "Take this!" she yelled, flinging the disc in her hand at the unit and guiding it with her biotics.

The disc slapped onto the front of the unit before activating. An internal explosive charge fired, shooting a ball of element zero into the Crawler before the disc capacitor discharged an arc of electricity into the ball. A wave of dark energy erupted, exploding the Crawler from the inside.

"Heavy unit down!" Shepard noted as she finished picking off the last baller, blowing off its turret. Undeterred, the unit still surged forward, trying to run down the troublesome woman. Shepard let her rifle hang from its sling, took two steps forward and punted the baller backward. The team watched in awe as the hapless unit smashed into a protruding rock.

"Man, no wonder you're single if you kick balls that hard," Garrus chuckled.

"What is that supposed to mean?!" Tali demanded, blushing inside her helmet at the innuendo.

"Oh that's not why I'm single," Shepard smirked. "You want me to show you the real reason?"

"Commando on the ramp!" Wrex called.

"I'll pass on that," Garrus answered as he fired another shot, drilling through the unfortunate geth commando leading a geth fireteam towards them.

An audible alarm began ringing as the team finished off the geth troopers. "I think we got their attention," Wrex noted.

"Then let's move fast," Shepard replied as she motioned for the team to go forward. "Who knows what else Saren has in this place."

 **Tartarus**

 _"It's truly a fascinating life form, director!"_ Dr. Vahlen gushed. _"Not only for redefining our standards for plant life, it's also an opportunity to examine the differences between its psionic potential and ours. Perhaps with this, we can finally determine what structures to look for!"_

"Then I suppose Project Thorian will keep you occupied for quite some time, doctor," Harper noted. "Will you require any resources from us?"

 _"It would be nice if we could transport a…cutting of the creature to a separate facility. Unfortunately, my team lacks the heavy equipment for such a task, and there are certain security concerns…"_

"Draw up your requirements, and I'll see if we can spare the resources."

 _"That would be greatly appreciated, Jack!"_

"She really hasn't changed," Dr. Core noted as the link cut off. "Give her something that potentially redefines a field of science, and she'll never shut up about it."

"Like teacher like student, then?" Harper smirked. "I've seen those same tendencies in you."

"Hey! I can at least keep my mouth shut!" Core fired back.

"When it suits you," the director returned. "What do you think of Project Thorian?"

"Well we don't know how Saren or 'Sovereign' was controlling Benezia, but we do know that the same thing was working on that one Asari the Thorian controlled. And it said it 'cleansed the taint,' according to the Commander. So maybe our line of research could lead us to a way to counter Saren's mind control. Possibly even reverse it."

"Run with it," Harper said with little consideration. "We'll see where this goes."

Eva checked off an item on her computer before moving on. "The Hypathia Institute has been cooperating with us, but nothing in their archives about this 'Conduit.' However, there are numerous references to 'Reapers' scattered throughout the later finds, near the end of their species, along with various epithets that are moderately entertaining reading."

"Or perhaps their translators have a sense of humor."

"I doubt that," Core sniffed. "In my experience, historians are as dry as the dust on the artifacts they study."

"It might help for us to know how far the Protheans extended across the galaxy, and possibly what territories they claimed."

"Way ahead of you. The institute recently got their hands on a star map from an ancient Prothean computer. No telling if it has every planet they colonized, but we should be able to narrow down the list of possibilities and localize them."

"Dr. Chakwas's report stated that both Dr. T'Soni and the Commander saw the Rachni specifically remembering an ancient Prothean city."

"Well that definitely narrows it down. I'll have my team check with the institute and run that angle down. We're also going to try and interview the Thorian and see if that thing can give us a few other hints."

"Be careful not to fall under its sway."

"That's what armored envirosuits are for."

 **Virmire**

"Call me crazy," Tali commented while firing another shotgun blast down the corridor, "but something tells me that splitting up inside a base full of angry krogan and geth isn't really the best idea!"

"That's for us to worry about," Wrex answered as he casually flicked out a colossal knife and severed a geth arm before plunging it into the crest of a krogan clone. "We'll keep them away from your squishy suit."

"Squishy?" Tali repeated indignantly.

"Armored soldiers are what we call 'crunchies,'" Garrus added dryly before lining up a shot with his standard rifle. "People who don't wear armor are 'squishies.' For obvious reasons." He triggered the built-in laser and watched two geth commandos, a krogan clone, and a spectacularly unfortunate geth baller dropped to the floor with a sizeable hole through each of them. "Hah, overkill!"

"He's not joking about that, girl," Wrex growled. "Watch what happens when a tank runs over a squad of enemies and you'll see what we mean."

"Sorry I asked…" Tali muttered, fighting a wave of nausea at the mental image.

An explosion rocked the facility, shooting a cloud of dust down the corridor behind the three. "Incoming reinforcements!" Garrus called.

"On it!" Wrex used his krogan strength to rip up a section of a shattered floor panel before engulfing it in a mass effect field and flinging it back down the hallway. There were two screams, and the distinct sound of a geth platform being sliced in half before a loud crack echoed back. Wrex frowned. "Hmph, I don't remember a wall being there."

"I don't think that's a wall…" Tali corrected with trepidation.

A blue glow suddenly reached them down the hall, and Garrus's jaw dropped as a _massive_ geth strode out of the dust, bits of debris from the shattered panel flaking off its fist. He made to raise his rifle before Wrex slapped it back down.

"Pup," the old battlemaster snarled as he picked up a panicking and shrieking quarian girl. "this is the part where you put that gun down and run like a scared little pyjack." Without waiting for an answer, the krogan shot down the hallway much faster than Garrus had ever seen a krogan run.

With one last look, the turian Spectre saw the geth raising a menacing rifle, muzzle glowing an ominous yellow. _Yep,_ he thought to himself. _When the thousand year old krogan tells you to run AWAY from a fight, of all things, you should probably do what he says and haul ass._

* * *

"I don't believe this!" Shepard whispered to herself as she gazed at the wrecked laboratory, more specifically the mechanical specimen on the central workstation. "The geth are building fusion lances!"

"That explains why the damage looked so similar, ma'am," Williams agreed, the shock of the moment enough to override her normally taciturn manner.

"The geth have Alliance technology?" Liara asked, puzzled. "How is that possible? You humans are obsessive over security of military hardware."

"From the looks of it," Shepard answered uncertainly, "they're doing conceptual engineering. This doesn't look exactly like our weapons. It's about three times as big. That's probably from the heat shielding to protect the components from the reactors built into the weapon. Maybe they were studying wreckage and combat footage from the Citadel."

"We definitely need to destroy this place, ma'am," Ashley chimed in with a hard tone.

Just then, Shepard's radio went off. _"Hey commander, we got a big problem here,"_ the turian began without preamble.

"I noticed."

 _"Oh spirits, there's two of these geth monsters?!"_

Shepard looked at the other women, their faces mirroring her confused expression. "Not that kind of problem, Garrus."

 _"Great, well this particular problem is chasing us toward the geth anti-air cannon. I don't even know if the plasma rifle you gave me will do anything to this thing."_

"You mean it shrugged off a plasma sniper round?" the red head yelped incredulously.

 _"Can't say if it would. I'm busy running for my life, if you haven't noticed. Could really use some help, if you don't mind."_

"On our way!"

* * *

/Communications intercepted. Shepard-Commander proceeding to aid Vakarian-Spectre.

/Confirmed. Localizing enemy force.

 **/Query: supporting units in position?**

/Affirmative. Awaiting arrival.

/Anomalous transmission pattern. Duration: five seconds. Content: no significant communication.

 **/Irrelevant.**

/Alerting Arterius-Commander.

* * *

"Oh keelah…" Tali breathed, looking directly up at the enormous geth cannon. "No wonder that frigate went down in one hit."

"When you're done admiring the geth for building a big damn gun, you might want to worry about the big damned geth that's behind us!" Wrex snapped.

Garrus scrambled out of the facility, huffing as he threw a small package at the doorway before triggering it. The satchel detonated, blowing the support frame out and collapsing nearly eight tons of concrete over it. "That should buy us some time…" he gasped as he caught up to the two.

"Don't count on it," Wrex warned.

"Now where's that anti-holy shit that's a big gun…"

Garrus's musings were cut off by the sound of a yellow particle beam spearing through the debris pile in the doorway.

"Time to move again," Wrex noted before the doorway exploded once again, flinging the concrete outward and revealing the geth giant once more.

 **"Creator, you will not escape your crimes,"** the unit thundered as it turned to aim its particle beam cannon at the three.

Garrus quickly fired a pulse grenade as he retreated while Wrex let loose a shotgun slug at the cannon, throwing the geth's aim off, where it blasted off a section of the cliff wall above them.

"Commander, anytime would be nice!"

 _"The cavalry's coming. Just hold on!"_

 **"Resistance is futile. You cannot run. You cannot hide. You will face justice, creator."**

"Tell me how futile this is!" Wrex roared as he biotically grasped the top section of the cliff and _heaved_. Structurally compromised, the pile of rock fell in one massive clump, aimed squarely at the giant geth. The unit had just enough time to look up before being buried.

"Well, when rocks fall, everyone dies," Garrus noted sardonically.

The pile exploded outward, revealing that the geth only had cosmetic damage to its metal shell.

"Of course," the turian continued with chagrin as he raised his plasma rifle. "that only seems to apply to things that are actually alive!"

The geth glowed blue again, and then the team looked upward where another section of the cliff was separating itself from the wall. But this one was coming down on them.

"The geth have biotics!" Tali shrieked as she scrambled to safety, a particularly large chunk of rock slamming down at her heels.

"You've gotta be kidding me!" Garrus yelped as the plasma round harmlessly dispersed against a flaring kinetic barrier.

 **"Negligible damage sustained. Systems nominal,"** the geth announced as it marched forward. **"Your strength is irrelevant. You will not succeed. Observe."**

The team whirled around just in time to see four Crawlers, a series of geth ballers and several squads of troopers and commandos emerging to surround them. As they turned back to the large geth unit, they noticed a group of krogan clones behind it.

"Oh keelah…" Tali whimpered, dropping her shotgun to the ground.

"Well, shit…" Garrus muttered.

"You think Saren will win?!" Wrex howled. "You geth have just picked a fight with everyone in the galaxy! Forget the Citadel! The humans will destroy you!"

 **"Countermeasures are in place. The outcome is clear. You will not stop Nazara. The Creators will be made to atone for the Crime."**

"Crime?!" Tali demanded. "What crime are you talking about?"

 **"Creator killed creator. Creator sought to destroy geth. Creators are family. To kill family is the highest crime."** The geth leveled its rifle at Tali. **"Creators have escaped justice. Creators are unrelenting against geth. Geth have done no wrong. We will ensure our safety by stopping the Creators, and the Creators will face justice for the Crime of killing Creator."**

A cluster of geth units suddenly exploded as a burning stream of green scoured the ground from the sky. As one, the geth turned to fire at the source, but several things interrupted them.

"Now!" Captain Kirrahe yelled, directing his team to open fire on the geth commandos from stealth, cutting down almost twelve geth in an instant.

Two blue discs adhered themselves to two geth Crawlers before exploding them from the inside.

A blaster ball zipped into view before slamming into a third geth Crawler and obliterating it as well as the geth ballers surrounding it.

Wrex roared a battlecry before vaulting forward into the krogan clones behind the large geth.

Garrus grabbed Tali and dove into the smoking trench just as the Skyranger streaked into view and fired again, skewering the final geth Crawler.

And the geth giant suddenly found itself sailing through the air to crash into the rock face. As it clambered to its feet with a massive dent in its side, it caught sight of Commander Shepard, hunched over to recover from the massive blow. "Objection, your honor," she sneered as the familiar purple psionic aura surrounded her. "You'll lay your hands on Tali over my dead body!"

A loud whine echoed across the clearing as the geth's internal reactor spun up before a bright blue aura flared into existence around the geth, stronger than ever before. The unit bent into a ready position, bringing its hands in front. **"Close Combat mode engaged. Terms accepted, Shepard-Commander."**

* * *

Saren snarled inarticulately and smashed his prosthetic fist against the wall. "Damn it!"

"The overseer is engaging the intruders," the geth continued. "Estimated chance of success at 92%."

The turian took a deep breath and calmed down as he considered the state of his plans. When he really thought about it, it didn't really matter if the facility was lost. He already had an army. His geth were already in position on the Citadel. And now that the Hypathia Institute found that star map, he could just access the archive and let Sovereign crunch the data to find Ilos that way.

"It's irrelevant," he announced. "We're at the point now where our plans can't be stopped. If the facility is a loss, then it's a trivial one. You have backups of your data, right?"

"Affirmative, Arterius-Commander."

"Then it doesn't matter. We'll continue on."

"Understood."

Really, he thought to himself as the geth left him in his quarters, it wasn't all that bad. And if the overseer could finally kill that damned woman, so much the better.

* * *

"Die motherfucker die motherfucker die!" Williams yelled as she blew apart a geth commando with her alloy cannon.

"Weak, puny, waste of metal!" Wrex taunted, biotically swinging a disabled geth baller as a wrecking ball while indiscriminately hacking and slashing krogan clones and geth troopers with his oversized knife. "Junkyard scrap geth!"

"Commander!" Liara shouted in warning as the geth giant ignored her rifle fire in favor of picking up a large boulder and hurling it at impossible speed.

"Rargh!" Shepard roared, pulverizing the rock with a psionically armored punch before charging through.

The geth nimbly sidestepped her charge before catching her leg, and lifting the woman up high before slamming her back into the ground.

Shepard shook off the impact, ignoring the sparks in her eyesight before grabbing a hold of the geth's wrist. "Give me a hand, will you?" she growled before wrenching with both hands and shearing through the armor and wiring of the geth's limb.

Undeterred, the geth simply wound up its other fist, pulsing with biotic energy, before punching the ground where Shepard just vacated.

Moments before impact, the energy built up in its fist was released into a blast that exploded across the ground, flinging the commander almost twenty meters away to slam into the cliff face.

Garrus took that moment to fire at its shoulder, drilling through the servomotor and almost lopping off the arm. The geth whirled around and fired another biotic blast with its good arm right at his position in the trench. _Oh this is gonna hurt…_ he thought as he sailed four meters through the air before his back met a protruding rock and his world exploded in agony. _Yep, hello back pain..._

Liara flung another disc at the geth only to watch helplessly as the geth's biotics overpowered hers and sent it right back.

"Get out of the way!" Williams exclaimed tackling the scientist as the disc soared over before destroying a nearby rock, pelting the two women with shrapnel.

"I can't get that on him!" Liara lamented. "My gun does nothing and his biotics are stronger than mine!"

Williams watched as Shepard tangled with the geth again before the geth lifted the woman up in a one-handed chokehold. "Throw me at it," she ordered, snatching another disc.

"What?!" Liara blanched.

"Do it now!"

Liara hesitated slightly before obliging. As Ashley soared at the geth, she focused on its back, holding the disc forward before colliding with it and pressing it firmly enough to activate the explosive mechanism.

The resulting explosion was tremendous. The geth's internal reactor added to the explosive power of the breaching charge, obliterating its lower body. The shockwave also shattered the geth's arm while introducing the Commander to the cliff face for a second time.

As the dust cleared, Liara lowered her hands to see the crater and the twitching geth torso on the lip. A part of her also noticed the unmoving body of the gunnery chief.

"Glad that's over," Wrex noted, walking over to the turian who was currently being fussed over by the frantic quarian. "I'm noticing a trend, pup. You trying to be like your ancestors and fly everywhere all the time?"

"Laugh it up, Wrex," Garrus groaned as he stood up, gingerly massaging his back.

"Is everyone okay?" Shepard called as she made her way over.

"Commander, Williams is…" Liara trailed off, unsure how to finish.

The red head looked over at the commando for a moment before seeing a twitch. "We're going to have words about this stunt you pulled, Williams."

Liara heard a garbled noise that sounded vaguely like "you're welcome ma'am."

 **"Fu…tile…"** the geth vocalized.

Tali crept towards the broken unit. "What were you talking about? What do you mean 'creator killed creator?'"

 **"You killed…them…while attempting to…destroy geth. That is…your crime…creator."**

"Well it looks like Tali's escaped your justice," Shepard interjected.

The geth produced something that resembled laughter. **"Only…for today. Not forever. We…are geth. We are…LEGION. We…do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us…Creator Tali. We will…meet again…"**

 **Citadel**

Electronic eyes observed C-Sec headquarters. An alien consensus calculated physical vulnerabilities and explosive yields before settling on a desired layout and deployment pattern.

Glistening metallic shapes became visible as the cloaked units emerged from the shadows. Each one electronically acknowledged the signal that had been recently sent from Nazara: **Begin infiltration.**

 _Contact Report: Geth Commander_

 _Even more dangerous than it's smaller commando brethren, the geth commander unit is evidently an attempt to emulate Commander Shepard's combat abilities._

 _Large and heavily armored, it's true threat lies in it's biotic abilities. An internal supercomputer coupled with Mass Effect field manipulation technology allows this purely mechanical unit to use abilities previously believed restricted to living beings._

 _The source of this power is a micro-fusion generator analogue based on Element Zero, built into the combat platform. It produces an order of magnitude more energy than standard geth unit cores. The abundance of power is what allows this unit to passively maintain vehicular level kinetic barriers and makes it outright immune to small-scale EMP attacks._

 _The geth commander has been observed using its biotic abilities to boost its speed in a similar manner to Commander Shepard's psionic armor technique, temporarily reducing the mass of its limbs and body to move at velocities that would normally damage its chassis. In addition, it has demonstrated the use of pulsed Mass Effect fields to clear an area around itself in a repulsive wave.  
_

 _The large Element Zero signature would normally be a downside as it would be visible on vehicular scanning equipment and vulnerable to anti-vehicular weaponry. However, the unit's inherent agility and speed as well as its intelligent defenses make this more of a theoretical downside than a practical one._

 _Personal Notes (Dr. Vahlen): We can learn so much from this unit. Potentially, we could give our MEC troopers biotic abilities as well as an anti-infantry countermeasure for our troops and vehicles. I've already drawn up designs for a "repulsor" field modification that could be applied to tanks, armor, and even our starships. The ability to maintain a distance from enemies is highly valuable._

 _Codex: Nova Mine_

 _The defining characteristic of this Alliance weapon is its complete lack of Elerium and total reliance on Element Zero. Designed as an infantry-portable anti-emplacement weapon, it is spectacularly adept at clearing out small buildings or large rooms of enemy units, though often leaving a considerable mess._

 _The Nova Mine was designed for use in enemy territory, hence its lack of Elerium._

 **Dun dun dun! A certain geth makes an early appearance!**

 **And when the thousand year old krogan decides to haul ass, it's probably a good idea to follow his lead.**

 **The geth commander went after Tali instead of Shepard because the geth knew that it would draw the group into one location. Tali, Garrus and Wrex definitely would NOT have been able to do shit to it. So Shepard would have to rescue them, opening up a chance to eliminate them all at once.**

 **Unfortunately for the geth, they didn't expect Kirrahe or the Skyranger.**

 **In ME Canon, Mass Effect fields can be controlled by large machines or by individuals with biotic amps. But the amps are doing the work of collecting and focusing that energy before directing it at the user's discretion. It's never made sense to me why it only has to be living beings. If that amp and some Element Zero nodules in a person's biology are all that's needed for biotic ability, why isn't there a purely mechanical unit that uses straight electricity and Element Zero to mimic biotics?**

 **Furthermore, it's more consistent than relying on living beings. The Asari being an exception, biotics are very rare because it's difficult for the body to properly adapt to active Element Zero in its system. Machines are engineered and parts are produced with negligible variances.**

 **And the single biggest advantage to creating machine biotics is that they do not run off a metabolism. There's no biology to support. There's no biotic exhaustion. Biotics for the geth are like psionics for the Alliance, with the one advantage to the geth being that they can be produced at a much higher rate.**

 **And this development puts the geth pretty much on even footing with the Alliance, barring the Jaegers.**

 **Anyways, mini-rant over. We're getting close. Please review!**


	20. It was going so well

**The beginning of the end (of ME1). Saren attacks General Summers. It's ON!**

Chapter Nineteen

 **The Normandy**

First Lieutenant Pressly eyed the sensor data on the bridge as Joker held the Normandy in position. Meanwhile, Weapons Officer Second Lieutenant Misha Shavrov held one hand to the headset glued to his ear before nodding. "Capacitors at full power, sir. Batteries primed."

"Fire."

In the silence of space, the Normandy's fusion lance spun up the payload before the first set of firing capacitors discharged. The projectile streaked downward at almost forty percent the speed of light, taking ten seconds to transit from the firing point to the depowered geth base before smashing into the west wing of the facility. It was the next thing to an asteroid impact. Prior to that point, the internal warhead had triggered, going into its explosive sequence, which meant that the blast wave from the nuclear payload erupted almost two hundred meters above the base.

The supersonic blast wave crushed down on the facility before the force of the impacting projectile created a secondary sideways-moving shockwave. The combined forces created a torqueing motion that sheared through even the reinforced structures, resulting in them crumbling like sandstone.

Meanwhile, the fusion lance's internal configuration rotated the rails and brought a second shot forward. This one, and the following one were aimed off to the sides, creating a destructive three-way Venn-diagram on the planet below.

"Barrage completed, sir. Firing capacitors spent."

"Switch to secondary capacitor banks. One kinetic strike at full power on the subterranean generators."

When the final shot smashed into the ruins, it easily penetrated into the deepest levels, finishing the job started by its more explosive brethren.

"Target destruction confirmed."

Pressly nodded as he visually confirmed from the camera footage. "Joker, get us out of here!"

 _"Aye aye, sir!"_

"That facility definitely won't be missed," Captain Kirrahe noted from behind the human officer.

"Unfortunately, we didn't really get much out of it beyond stopping Saren's plans to make an army of krogan."

"Only on your end," the STG officer replied smugly. "While we were enjoying the complete lack of interference due to your people's penchant for destruction and chaos, we managed to copy most of their database before the geth realized what was going on."

Pressly eyeballed the salarian. "By any chance, would you be inclined to share that copy?"

"It would be quite rude of us not to properly thank the Alliance for saving our skins."

"Any idea what's in it?"

"From what my technical expert told me, most of it is a huge archive on the Protheans. I would guess that Saren was looking through them for something."

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Pressly agreed. "So far, we've learned that Saren is searching for something called 'the Conduit,' something the Protheans made before they disappeared. You've been briefed on our search, right?"

"That you were conducting one, yes. We weren't told about anything you may have found."

"Then let's wait to exchange data until the Commander gets back up here," the human officer suggested.

"Fair enough."

* * *

Shepard looked up when she heard the medical bay door open and saw Dr. Chakwas step out, rubbing her eyes, tiredly.

"How is she?"

Chakwas sighed. "She'll survive. Much like you, she is an incredibly stubborn soldier who will not give up. However, the damage is severe. She'll be in traction for at least three years."

"What will she need done?" the red-head asked, almost dreading the answer.

"A good amount of neural regenerative therapy. Going from twenty meters per second in one direction to about thirty the other way gave her partial internal decapitation and a severe concussion. Also dust-form element zero decontamination treatments," the doctor rattled off. "I'm doing what I can for that here, but that's a stopgap measure at best. And her left arm has been almost completely shattered. At this point, it would be much faster and simpler just to give her a prosthetic, since otherwise, we'll have to rebuild half her skeleton and make sure the corresponding ligaments and musculature are attached properly."

Shepard closed her eyes for a second. "What would you say about her mental state?"

"Well seeing how she had not been by my office for a consultation, I can only go by your mission reports. But taking a near-suicidal risk like she did and from the crew's comments on her lack of interaction and Commander Alenko's notes on her file, I'd say she was a very broken soldier even before this stunt. Had I known how severe her issues were, I would have had you drag her to my office right away."

Shepard leveled a baleful glare at her reflection on the floor tile, feeling scorn for herself. "I should have gotten to her earlier…" she growled.

"Commander, if anyone is to blame, it would be me," Chakwas rebuked her. "You have been busy with the mission from the Director and General Summers. It was my job to see to the crew's well-being. I was remiss in not checking on her myself."

"But I-"

"You are the senior commanding officer. Your job is to handle the mission. And what's done is done, Erin. You can't go back and do it over like in a videogame. We'll all have to live with our mistakes. And now, I'll see to mine," the doctor concluded ruefully. "Perhaps you should check back in with the others. It may help take your mind off of Williams' condition."

After standing in place for a minute, Shepard took a deep breath and moved to the cargo bay, where she found Wrex sitting on a crate off to the side, staring into the distance.

"You know, I still don't completely get why you let us wipe that place out," she noted.

Wrex snorted. "What else is there to get? Saren was the guy behind it, so no good could come of it."

"I don't know," Shepard replied, folding her arms. "You seem like the kind of guy who would do anything to help his people. Maybe that could involve working with guys you don't like."

"Butcher, your people have the most ruthless and efficient military force in the galaxy. And you also have some of the best scientists anyone's ever seen. The Salarians? Those pyjacks just neutered us. Probably didn't have the guts to go further than that. But you humans?" The krogan pulled out his canteen. "I read up on your history with the Chryssalids. You used a virus to exterminate every last one of them on your planet. If my people threw in with Saren, you'd probably whip up something just like that and do the same thing to my race."

"Yeah, we probably would," Shepard agreed.

"Whatever Saren could do for my people was useless once he threw down with you Alliance types. Everyone in the galaxy knows you do not fuck around when it comes to war. One random turian, a bunch of mind-controlled asari, some geth, and one Reaper dreadnought? Against the Alliance?" The krogan shook his head. "I want my people to survive. I was there when we were a great race. I would like to see us be that way again, before I kick the thresher maw. And one of the best chances we have is to join up with you. You have what it takes to cure my people, and you don't really give a damn about what the Citadel says."

"So that's why you came up to me back there," Shepard realized.

"Yeah," the old battlemaster nodded. "One thing everyone's worried about is what my people would do if they got rid of the Genophage. Most of the idiots back on Tuchanka would go out for revenge. But I'm not that stupid. And even though my clan hasn't seen me around for centuries, I'm technically a clan leader. Clan Urdnot," he announced with a wistful air. "Seems like forever since I've bothered to talk about them. But there you go. There's my pitch. I help the Alliance, the Alliance helps me. You support me and my clan, I give you my people as allies. And I'll keep people like my idiot brother in check. War and combat ruined us. It's time for a change."

"That's a big offer to consider, Wrex," Shepard warned. "And there'd be a ton of fallout over this."

"Don't have to tell me twice. I know the rest of the galaxy will flip out over it. But they can go to hell. They used my people as a weapon against the Rachni, and then they broke us. Far as I'm concerned, the best way to stick it to them is to bring my people back to greatness and let them rot."

"Well I'll pass it up to the Director. No promises though."

* * *

"Oh hey Commander," Garrus waved as Shepard stepped onto the bridge. "We were just waiting for you so we can get started."

"Alright," Kirrahe began. "while you were busy making noise down there, we managed to copy the database. Your XO told me that Saren was searching for something called 'the Conduit.' My guys told me there are a few entries in the database that refer to this 'Conduit.' Just to be sure, I showed this to Dr. T'Soni."

"The geth apparently discovered a Prothean beacon a while ago that they led Saren to when he met with them," Liara chimed in. "It refers to the 'Conduit' as something of a project they were working on, right around the time entries about the Reapers start showing up."

"So the Reapers are definitely real then," Shepard noted.

"Well when one source tells you something, it's hearsay," Garrus replied sardonically. "When two of them do, it's a hint. And when three or five are singing the same song, it's either a conspiracy or someone went to a lot of trouble to fake something."

"The records indicate that the 'Conduit' was meant to be something of a crowning achievement for the Protheans. Unfortunately, nothing says what it is," Liara continued, frustrated.

"What about a location?" Shepard asked.

"There's one entry that refers to 'Ilos,' but no one's been able to find it," Liara growled. "Maybe this is why Saren wanted me."

"Commander," Pressly walked over. "I don't mean to interrupt ma'am, but while you were down there, Command left a message for Dr. T'Soni. Something about the institute she worked with finding a map of some kind."

"They did what?!" Liara shrieked before frantically typing into her omni-tool to the bemusement of the group.

"Well, that escalated quickly," Garrus commented.

"I don't believe it!" Liara breathed. "They've found it! We finally have the star coordinates to get to Ilos! Oh, this is the best chance we have to study the Prothean Golden Age!"

"Stop bouncing there, T'Soni. We need to find the Conduit first," Shepard cut in.

"Two questions," the Spectre wondered. "Where the hell is Ilos, and how do we get there?"

"According to what we know of the Relay network, it is accessible through the Mu Relay, but that was ejected from the galactic plane," Kirrahe replied.

"Alliance ships don't need the Relays, remember?" Shepard reminded him smugly. "All we need is for Liara to get us the stellar coordinates, and we can move."

"I got a note from Dr. Gen'aris about this in my mailbox," Liara announced. "She gave me the coordinates."

"Go forward and tell Joker where to go," Shepard ordered.

"You know, doesn't this feel awfully convenient that we're finding everything we're looking for right now?" Pressly noted.

"Now that you mention it, yeah," Garrus agreed. "Almost like some big dramatic cop-out build-up."

Kirrahe noted that his omni-tool was flashing and pulled up the message before freezing. "Oh this isn't good…"

"What's that?" The turian looked at him.

"One of the encrypted files we managed to grab before the geth started wiping the database. My tech expert told me it has a tactical map of the Citadel and a target list for geth strike teams to go after."

"What are they?"

"The Presidium, for one. C-Sec is on there. Local traffic control, emergency services, evacuation and shelter stations…" the salarian looked up, his face turning pallid and ashen. "Saren's planning a full-scale assault on the Citadel!"

"Anything about when he's planning this for?" Shepard demanded.

"No," the STG agent shook his head. "but I'm betting it'll happen soon."

"I got a few calls to make," Garrus excused himself.

 **Citadel**

"Say what?" Nihlus asked incredulously. "Saren's going to attack _here_?!"

 _"Yeah. Even got a list of priority targets. You need to warn them."_

"This is for real? It's not some false flag?"

 _"If it's not, it's going to be one hell of a scam. Either way, you have to warn C-Sec and the Council. This is way the hell bigger than we thought."_

"Roger that," Nihlus replied.

"The half of that conversation didn't sound good," Captain Anderson noted.

"Well you want the good news first?"

"Hit me."

"They figured out where Saren's headed. The Conduit is on the planet Ilos."

"And the bad news is he's planning to attack the Citadel."

"Yeah," Nihlus's jaw tightened.

"You get your people moving, and I'll let General Summers know."

 **Tartarus**

"Ilos?" Harper repeated.

 _"Yes sir,"_ Shepard confirmed. _"And not only that, he's aiming for the Citadel as well."_

"So Saren is stepping up his game," the director mused. "Commander, you will likely have to deal with considerable opposition. I'll cut orders to our Covert Detachment to reinforce you at Ilos."

 _"Thank you sir. What do we do about the salarians?"_

"We'll shuttle them to the Citadel afterward."

 _"Understood, sir."_

"At last, Saren reveals his goal," Dr. Core murmured as the image went blank.

"How do you figure that?"

"Since he was willing to pick a fight with a galactic power, it follows that his eyes were on something huge. We've run across constant and consistent references to the 'Reapers' as the threat that ended the Protheans. I daresay that Saren intends to unleash them against us."

"Perhaps, but how does the Citadel factor into it?" Harper objected.

"Popular opinion among Prothean experts is that the Citadel was created by the Protheans," Eva shrugged. "Maybe there's something in it that's the key to bringing the Reapers back."

"That's pure speculation," the director rebuked. "All we know for sure is that the Citadel is an objective that Saren means to take somehow."

"You did ask for my opinion," the doctor replied defensively.

A new image appeared, this one of the scarred General Summers. _"Harper,"_ he rumbled.

"I assume you've already heard about the pending attack," the director queried.

 _"Yeah."_

"Then you know you'll probably be a prime target," Jack warned.

 _"That's the idea,"_ the general agreed. _"I know that Saren probably has a bone to pick with me, so I'll try and draw him out. If he knows I'm in the Embassy, that's where he'll go, and our response can try and pick him off."_

"With respect sir, losing you would potentially be a disaster for the Alliance," Harper objected.

 _"Just because I'm a brasshole now doesn't mean I've forgotten what it's like to be a soldier, Jack."_

"I'm only asking that you keep your value in mind, sir."

 _"Always,"_ the general answered. _"I'm diverting Vice Admiral Mikhailovich and the 69th Assault Group to make haste towards the Serpent Nebula. Worse comes to worst, the Marines can augment the Citadel's defenses and standby to evacuate our people while the boys in blue handle any Naval threat. And if the whole thing goes pear-shaped, The Olympus is on standby."_

"I guess you've already made your decision then, sir."

 _"You guess right. The Alliance can't just run away from this. Our image as a race won't allow it."_

"Then good luck to you, sir," Harper announced resignedly.

 **Ilos**

The geth forces in orbit expected interference soon enough, but nothing quite like the force that struck shortly after Saren landed at the ruins.

Under the direction of Lieutenant Commander Mitsuru Satoshi, the four stealth frigates jumped to a position "above" the geth fleet and the planet before launching a rapid salvo of fusion lance rounds that crumpled every ship that was close to aiming in their direction.

Having lost six of their number, the remaining twenty-four geth warships began moving, trying to slew around and target the new enemy when the Normandy swooped in, accompanied by several Covert Detachment Firestorms, wreaking havoc from inside the formation.

In response, hordes of geth fighters streamed out from the various ships only to be cut down by newly-arrived gunboats bristling with anti-fighter defenses.

Two destroyers jumped "behind" the geth fleet and unleashed their guns, bringing the number down to twenty before the frigates repositioned and fired again. In the span of ten minutes, thirty geth warships were reduced to fourteen.

And then the cruiser joined the fight, emerging from a wormhole dead center of the geth formation before firing every single weapon battery and shrugging off the desperate counterfire. Hardened plasma punched through the thin hulls. The three larger geth craft unfortunate enough to be in front were dispatched with one shot each from the cruiser's main gun. Gravity missiles exploded between ships, creating vortices that smashed fighters against their motherships and shredded what was left of the geth fleet.

"No more opposition in orbit, ma'am," Pressly reported. "The Commander's heading down now."

"We'll provide cover."

The Skyranger descended through the atmosphere, flanked by two Firestorms. The major piloting the craft flinched instinctively as a familiar-looking yellow stream of particles raced past his windshield. As if indignant at the threat to its charge, one Firestorm answered with a white lance that silenced the Crawler that dared open fire.

But then the missiles flew. The major swore as he jinked and juked through the incoming hail of guided munitions as the copilot worked the flares and jamming equipment, while the Firestorms broke off to clear out the anti-air fire.

Finally, and not without a few close calls, the Skyranger reached the ground and stopped right in front of a colossal door that the geth had been guarding before being obliterated by plasma and fusion lance fire.

"Ma'am," the major called. "We can't get through this."

"Laze the door. We'll have the Valhalla open it for us," Shepared ordered.

The three airborne units flew backward to a safe distance before the Skyranger highlighted the door and uploaded the targeting data. Then the cruiser Valhalla angled its nose downward and internally adjusted its cannon before firing a kinetic lance.

Like the hammer of an angry god, the ultra-dense shaft pulverized the door and blew a wave of dust out two kilometers. The Skyranger ignored it in favor of flying into the tunnel while the Firestorms orbited above the entrance.

"Good god, it's a shooting gallery!" The copilot yelled as he triggered the Skyranger's plasma cannons. In this environment, he didn't even need to aim. The geth were packed into one narrow attack vector, and the rapid fire plasma pierced and boiled the enemy while the Skyranger's combination shield system dealt with the incoming fire. The pilot clenched his jaw in silent disagreement as he struggled to keep the craft from taking a direct hit from the geth Crawlers inside. Finally, it seemed resistance petered out, and they overflew the last of the geth units, only to stop at a rippling energy barrier. The pilot quickly turned around and disgorged the team and the cover plates before lifting back up into overwatch.

"Well this is new," Garrus commented. "It's not blue, for once."

"I don't see a way past it," Tali noted.

"Try the door over there," Liara pointed.

"We'll watch your back, Commander," the major assured them as they went through the doorway.

Shepard eyed the panel inside before mashing the button. The doorway immediately sealed, and the team observed as the room dropped downward.

"Amazing," Liara breathed. "This place is still functional after almost fifty thousand years."

"It has to be running off a generator of some kind," Tali chimed in.

"It also means that if there are any defense measures, they could be active like that shield," Wrex growled in warning.

"Right. Everyone stay sharp," Shepard called as the doorway opened, revealing a short walkway and a flickering holographic image.

 ** _"There is no taint in these ones. Perhaps they can stop the cycle,"_** a voice mused.

 _"Stop what cycle?"_ Shepard asked, to the bewilderment of everyone else.

Silence, and then the voice spoke again. **_"You understood our tongue,"_**

 _"Apparently so,"_ she replied. _"I did touch one of your beacons."_

"Commander, what are you saying?" Liara demanded. "I can't understand a word!"

 ** _"You who can speak, approach."_** A pillar rose up, one that was quite familiar to Shepard.

"A Prothean Beacon…" Liara whispered.

 ** _"Touch the beacon so that I may share your tongue."_**

Shepard tentatively reached out before her vision erupted in white. Her memories, her knowledge, it streamed through her consciousness, and then the world returned to view.

 **"Thank you, Shepard. Now, let us talk,"** the voice continued in English. **"I am Vigil, the guardian of the Conduit, and the last desperate hope of stopping the Reapers return."**

 **Citadel, C-Sec Headquarters**

Executor Pallin lifted his head from the desk, where he could feel the beginnings of a migraine. "Your son told you this?"

"No sir," Tallus answered. "Spectre Kryik did. But Garrus told him first."

Pallin paused in thought. "What do you think of this?"

"Garrus may be…enthusiastic…but he's not the kind of person who panics. And you know Nihlus Kryik, sir. He doesn't go around saying things he doesn't think are true. I think we have to take this seriously, sir."

Pallen slammed his head back down. "Great," he snarled, before pressing a button. "This is Executor Pallin. Activate Shelter Plan. Alarm condition Blue."

Across the Citadel, a chain reaction spread. From C-Sec Headquarters, word came down that the Shelter Plan was being executed. Many district commanders looked at their seconds in bewilderment before complying. After all, orders were orders, and this was through the official chain of command.

On the streets, countless citizens looked up first in annoyance, and then concern as civil alarms began to scream. Then fear arrived as C-Sec officers poured out of their buildings into their patrol vehicles and spread across the districts, sirens howling, toward the emergency shelters. Each shelter, once it opened, activated notices for blocks around that directed civilians to the nearest one.

The communications boards all around the Citadel, usually flooded with advertising, suddenly all began showing the same image: the C-Sec logo, and a message announcing lockdown of the Citadel.

 _"What in the Spirits is going on?!"_ Presidium District Commander Horin Gamar demanded through conference call.

 _"I think we'd all like to know why we're calling a Condition Blue, sir,"_ Tower Control Commander Viya Cel'Tara, asked.

"Alright people," Pallin said as he and Tallus Vakarian walked into the Emergency Center. "I'll keep it short. We've been given a heads up from a reputable source that the rogue Spectre, Saren Arterius, is going to attack the Citadel real soon. We don't know the time, and we don't know his goals. But we need to be ready to fend off the attack."

 _"An attack here? That's insane!"_ Gamar protested. _"We have the whole Citadel Defense fleet and we can close the arms to deny entry! There's no way he could think that would succeed!"_

"Saren also attacked an Alliance Colony," Tallus chimed in. "I don't think he'll see things quite the same way. Not to mention that as a Spectre, he should be very familiar with our defenses and possibly how to bypass them."

 _"Do we know what forces we can expect?"_ the asari in command of the Destiny Ascension queried.

"Intel says that Saren is bringing the geth, some krogan, and a dreadnought of unknown origin," Pallin replied grimly. "And just to illustrate how strong that thing is, I heard from an Alliance officer that the dreadnought is the same one that attacked an Alliance Colony." _And survived,_ was the unspoken implication.

 _"Goddess Athame…"_

 **Citadel, Presidium**

"You're sure about this?" Tevos asked.

"Ma'am, the Alliance, Spectre Vakarian, and Captain Kirrahe of the STG seem to think it's credible," Nihlus replied. "I can't vouch for it, but when three sources are telling me the same thing, it's either an elaborate hoax, or probably the real thing."

"I've learned the hard way not to blow off Spectre Vakarian's warnings," Sparatus added dryly. "I don't advise doing so."

"It would appear that Executor Pallin agrees with that," Valern pointed out, indicating the screen in the back of the Presidium.

Ambassador Udina stood off to the side as Nihlus continued. "Councilors, we need to get you to shelter as well. The safest place for you would be the Destiny Ascension."

"No time like the present," Sparatus agreed.

Tela Vasir walked in, flanked by C-Sec officers. "Councilors, the shuttle is ready."

"Very well then," Tevos said reluctantly. "Would you join us Amba-"

"HNGH!" Udina staggered suddenly, his mind abruptly overwhelmed by a cacophony of voices, all unified into a scream that tore at his consciousness.

"Ambassador!" Captain Anderson grabbed the man and hauled him upright. "What's wrong, sir?!" Then the captain noticed blood beginning to trickle from the man's nose and ears.

 **Citadel, Traffic Control**

"Ma'am," another asari interrupted Cel'Tara. "You need to see this…"

The irritated asari officer turned to look at the screen, and her irritation melted away to be replaced with sheer terror.

On the sensor screen, were hundreds of unknown craft. And one of them was a gigantic cephalopod-shape with a shallow scar across the front hull plating.

And according to the sensors, every single one of their weapon banks was powered up.

 **Citadel, C-Sec Headquarters**

The geth surrounding the building noted the time and an incoming signal. It was the execution order from Saren. Nazara had arrived. Time to eliminate all obstacles.

"We need everyone on the street armed and ready," Pallin was saying. "They could attack at any-"

The basement room rocked as the geth explosives leveled C-Sec Headquarters. Power immediately went out. Pallin and Tallus were thrown against a console as the room plunged into darkness.

 **Citadel, Alliance Embassy**

 _There he is,_ Saren thought, gazing down from his hoverboard. _The human who killed my brother. The prime representative of these filthy monkeys._

"Destroy it," he ordered.

The geth crawlers surrounded the building and began firing shot after shot into the edifice. Partially melted chunks flew off. Composite sheets were shredded by the particle beam cannons. Support structures were compromised, and then the entire building collapsed.

Saren smiled. _Good riddance to garbage._

 ** _MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY!_**

The hoverboard glowed purple and creaked under him before being abruptly shattered. Suddenly unsupported, Saren dropped fifteen meters into a decorative fountain. As he climbed out, sputtering and wet, he watched in astonishment and horror as a giant purple "whirlpool" materialized around the geth Crawlers.

And the Crawlers were lifted into the air and swirled around helplessly as they were torn apart by unseen forces. Finally, the wreckage aggregated together and compressed itself into a ball before being slammed into the ground behind the terrified turian.

As he looked back at the building, a section of the dust cloud darkened before parting to reveal the man who'd effortlessly turned the attack around.

"You were supposed to be dead!" he whispered, more to himself, in denial.

The general raised his prosthetic left hand and caught a geth commando that flew toward him, surrounded by that damned purple glow, by the neck. The head of the hapless geth glowed slightly before a bolt of red shot from the equivalent of a face, and the geth ceased struggling.

"Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated," General Marcus Summers replied with a baleful glare as he dropped the geth, residual heat curling off his eyepatch, the right eye socket glowing red.

 **Commissar Yarrick? Is that you?**

 **I'm surprised no one commented on Wrex quoting Optimus Prime, or the geth Anonymous reference last chapter.**

 **The Codex never mentioned it, but the Citadel should have had a disaster/emergency shelter plan in place. That's what a city Crisis Management center handles. But in the story, they not once mention C-Sec doing anything like evacuating the citizens or alerting the populace.**

 **Think about that for a second. In Canon, all the Citadel did was mass their fleets together and sit there. They didn't close the Citadel up until the attack was underway. They behaved like business as usual. That is horrendously irresponsible. Consider just how much potential exposure the Citadel had to the space battle, and think about how long it would take to get everyone to shelter AS THE ATTACK HAPPENS.**

 **In here, the Citadel was alerted at the last moment, instead of an unspecified number of DAYS before Saren attacks. And as you just read, C-Sec HQ was just obliterated, so the chain of command is now upgefukted until a district commander takes initiative or orders from higher up come down.**

 **Which means that in this story, the Citadel has a legitimate excuse for being caught with their proverbial pants down.**

 **Also, remember that the Citadel has been upgrading their forces, so they aren't quite the just-ram-them level of pathetic that they were in Canon. That scene where Sovereign just plows through them was hilarious, but also sad.**

 **But more on that NEXT chapter. Review!**


	21. Closing the Trap

**And the second to last chapter of the ME1 section. General Summers demonstrates something that used to be on LoL champion Swain's trope page. Anyone seeking to take his head will find out VERY quickly that he is not just a ruthless old man.**

Chapter Twenty

 **Citadel, Presidium VIP Access**

A simple debrief. _A simple debrief!_ Nihlus snarled internally as he picked off a geth trooper at the rear with his pistol. And now it was an all-out war with geth, krogan and larger geth war machines crawling over the Citadel.

"How's Udina?" he yelled to Anderson, who was awkwardly handling his own laser sidearm while hoisting the ambassador on his shoulders.

"Still out of it!" the captain replied as he kicked in a wall panel to the right before grabbing the dented sheet and slamming it down sideways to form a slightly bent impromptu barricade.

"Nnnh…" Udina moaned as his consciousness strained against the torrent of alien voices screaming in agony and fear in his mind.

"No response from C-Sec channels! We're on our own here!" Tela Vasir announced as she carefully led the way toward the escape shuttle. Then one of the C-Sec guards suddenly flew backward off his feet as a bluish-white streak caved in his faceplate. "Sniper! Get down!"

"Shit!" Nihlus swore as both he and Anderson turned. But Anderson's pupils went into overdrive, zooming in on the geth commando at the far end, and allowing his trained hands a good target to point the laser pistol at. The customized pistol, with an out-of-regs focusing apparatus, fired a beam of purplish-red straight into the geth's flashlight eye, exploding the eye cluster and rendering the unit blind.

"Nice one!" Nihlus whistled appreciatively as his own shot sheared through a weak point in the geth's hip, eliminating the right leg's support.

Vasir finished off the unit with a rifle shot through the processor core before using her biotics to throw a remote explosive charge to the end, stopping just short of passing the corner. "Let's get moving!"

Keeping one finger on the detonator, Vasir eyeballed the corner, ready to trigger it if any geth entered the hallway. Then as they approached, she decided that it served its purpose and moved to pick it up.

"Wait!" Sparatus screamed. "The geth could-"

Vasir was flung backward, smashing against the wall with a bone-crunching impact as an electronic squawk on all frequencies echoed through the radios and detonated the explosives.

"FUCK!" Nihlus swore again. "Councilor Tevos, grab her! Sparatus, sir? Time to remember that weapons training you had!"

Anderson and the C-Sec officer watched both ends while Nihlus quickly policed the geth sniper rifle before snatching up Vasir's weapon and handing it to the turian councilor. "We're not making that mistake again," he growled, stripping off the remaining explosive charges on Vasir's equipment harness.

Sparatus shakily inspected the rifle, familiarizing himself with it, before his eyes caught movement at the end of the tunnel. As Anderson reacted with literal inhuman speed, he brought up the rifle and fired, sending a three shot burst into an unlucky geth baller that happened to roll around the corner at the wrong time. He hefted it in a moment of self-satisfaction. _Yep, I still got it,_ he thought to himself.

"Ready?" Nihlus asked, looking at an utterly terrified Tevos, who nodded rapidly while struggling to heft her fellow asari. "Okay, run for it!"

 **Citadel, C-Sec Headquarters**

Tallus scrambled to his feet before activating the flashlight on his omnitool. "This is First District Commander Tallus Vakarian. Anyone on this net, acknowledge!"

"This is Captain Xelia N'Aga!" an asari voice answered. "We're pinned down in the Wards by geth and krogan! Requesting backup!"

"This is Detective Chellick! Got some giant geth spider tanks approaching Mymerus Central Hospital! How are we supposed to stop these things?!"

"This is Sergeant James Heller! We're under fire from geth dropships! Someone get the civil defense turrets online!"

"Listen up, everyone!" Tallus called while the Emergency Center personnel started to look for a way out. "The geth took out HQ, and they're jamming long-range comms. You're on your own for now! Hold the line! Do NOT let them take out the evacuation shelters!"

"What…the hell…just happened?" Pallin groaned as he got up, nursing the right side of his head.

"Saren," Tallus replied dryly. "And now we're stuck down here until someone figures out a way to get out."

"No point," Pallin growled as the double images of his subordinate solidified into one. "The second we leave, we'll be easy pickings for the geth. They'll be waiting topside for us to poke our heads out."

"It also works the other way. If they try and get in, we'll rip them to shreds."

"What I would give to get my talons on that spirits-cursed bastard…"

 **Citadel, Local Space**

"All ships, target that dreadnought with particle beam cannons. Take that thing out!"

The fleet responded to the order enthusiastically, unleashing a hailstorm of yellow beams that streaked toward the cephalopod-shaped craft, with the intention of skewering it over and over.

But the geth fleet had other ideas. Gigantic screens of fighters were already hovering in front of the dreadnought, and they began to intercept the beams, sparing it the brunt of the salvo.

Meanwhile, the ancient ship flexed its tentacles, which glowed with heat before whipping them, one at a time, across a calculated path and trailing a stream of molten metal at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

For centuries, Citadel ship designs had focused on making warships as light as possible due to Mass Effect Propulsion constraints. This resulted in the absolute bare minimum of hull material needed to maintain integrity while sparing as much lifting capacity as possible for weapons, munitions, cargo and power sources.

It also meant that against a very hot, dense, and rapidly moving stream of metal, the only real defense their warships had was to not be in the way. And a good number of the larger Defense Fleet cruisers and destroyers were very much in the way of the ancient ship's line of fire.

The commander of the Destiny Ascension gaped in horror as the single salvo from the strange alien dreadnought sliced through fourteen heavy hitters. In the back of her mind, she recognized that the worst was still to come as she eyed the enormous geth fleet behind it.

But before they could add their guns to the carnage, something appeared to the side. A massive craft somewhat smaller than the alien ship, but also very much a familiar one. One that nearly everyone on the Citadel could recognize.

The Enterprise. The Alliance Carrier that General Summers had arrived on many years ago.

Evidently, the ship's fighter contingent had already been prepared to fight, because twenty new contacts warped into existence on the tactical map and twenty geth ships suddenly went spiraling off course with their engines destroyed.

That wasn't all, however. A small cloud of units drifted from the carrier and streamed toward the Citadel, numbering eight in all. The IFF database recognized them as Alliance troop transports. Meanwhile, the carrier vanished twenty minutes after it appeared, leaving its deployed forces to wreak havoc on the geth fleet.

The commander smiled grimly. At least they weren't alone in this fight, she reflected. But it still was up to the Citadel to stop the looming dreadnought that was still proceeding forward, contemptuous of the chaos behind it and the resistance before it.

 **Citadel, Presidium District**

The screaming in his head tore at his mind, throwing off his normally impeccable aim as he pursued the fleeing turian. But his own internal focused rage overpowered the collective voice enough that he could still function, albeit non-optimally.

"You can run," he snarled as he psionically snatched a car before throwing it at a geth crawler. "you can hide," he dodged a hail of fire from a suicidal geth baller before augmenting his mechanical arm with psionics and backhanding the one-and-a-half ton unit into the second floor of a hotel. "but you won't escape," he brought up his prosthetic again, forming a hard-light shield that he also augmented with his psionics to protect against the barrage of missile and particle fire from a geth dropship. "MY WRATH!"

The geth dropship glowed purple, and Saren desperately redoubled his efforts to scramble out of the way as the ship suddenly shot up before reversing course and nosediving straight down toward him.

"Yaaagh!" He screamed, barely escaping as the wingtip of the craft sliced into his armored suit half an inch deep. A second later, he was thrown several meters as the dropship's drive core went supercritical.

Summers bared his teeth in a feral manner, struggling through the increasingly loud cacophony of screaming voices in his head to continue forward. The only image he could make out came from his electronic eye, and an increasingly blurred one at that. "Where is your 'Sovereign' now?!" he roared. "Let him come to try and save you, boy! You definitely don't stand a chance at killing me!"

 _Sovereign, right!_ Saren thought. He keyed up his radio, still miraculously undamaged. "Sovereign, help me! KILL THE HUMAN!"

 **Citadel, Interior Space**

The ancient machine felt the equivalent of irritation as it plowed through the wreckage of the front line defenders into the slowly closing Citadel. In spite of its attempts to control the living pawn, the pawn's own instincts and emotions could not be completely overridden. A prime example of that being how instead of obeying the directive above all else, it had chosen to try and fulfill a pointless organic vendetta. And now it was demanding help.

Well that was easily taken care off. Waste of time or not, the obstacle would be promptly removed, and then the pawn would have nothing to prevent it from carrying out its directive.

Old yet advanced sensors locked on to the pawn and its location. Queries from the inorganic and foolish lesser pawns were answered, and a quick list of identifying criteria was formulated. On the ground, somewhat near the central spire, was the troublesome organic that was unknowingly preventing the directive from being fulfilled. But not for much longer.

As it lined up one of its armatures, sparking with minor damage from the battle with the unexpectedly formidable defenders, the machine idly wondered what about this organic…this human…was so special…

 **Citadel, Presidium District**

The screams were so loud by now that his head was pulsing in excruciating pain. His left eye was firmly squeezed shut in an involuntary physiological reaction to it, and his right eye was the only reason he could still try and chase the renegade turian.

He could sense utter terror, hatred and something else that was now creeping into Saren's mind. It caught him off guard. Was that…relief?

Summers looked up and for the first time laid eye on the dreadnought that had ripped apart Eden Prime. More specifically, he saw the glowing tip of one of its tentacles.

Pointing directly at him.

Saren let out an uncharacteristic yelp of joy as the ferrofluid poured down on his hated enemy. Surely, that would be the end of him.

"At last," he murmured in a more restrained manner as he turned away, smoke and the smell of burning composite and concrete reaching his nose. "Desolas has been avenged."

 ** _WRONG,_** screamed a voice in his head.

Saren whirled around, the enormous relief instantly replaced by pure unadulterated horror as he saw a familiar silhouette through the smoke.

General Summer stood tall and proud, engulfed in a rippling purple glow, ignoring the intense heat from the molten metal rain that had fallen on him, uniform still untouched. He looked upward at the alien ship and then spat. **"Not enough gun."**

 **Citadel, Interior Space**

The machine magnified its sensors and focused on the human as its processor experienced the electronic equivalent of disbelief. How? How was that organic alive? The energy yield of its cannon should have been sufficient to vaporize any organic. Nothing, in the eons that its kind had existed for, had ever withstood that kind of firepower unscathed.

And yet that organic was still there. Standing in a smoking melted crater above a pool of cooling metal fluid. In complete defiance of the laws of physics.

Its processors considered every available variable and bit of data in its vast memory banks, attempting to calculate and determine the reason for this impossible event. But no conclusion could be reached. There was nothing in its history even remotely similar to this. Nothing that could explain it. How, it wondered. How is this possible? How…

 **Citadel, Presidium District**

"What in the spirits are you?!" Saren whispered in terrified awe.

The general floated off the one section of the ground that was intact and five meters into the air to gaze down at the turian. His mind was now flooded with his own power, which attenuated the screams and allowed him to focus. **"I AM GENERAL MARCUS SUMMERS,"** his voice thundered across the Presidium. **"CHAMPION OF HUMANITY, THE VOLUNTEER OF ITS DEFENSE, AND THE SUPREME COMMANDER OF THE ALLIANCE. AND YOU ARE THE FOOL WHO THOUGHT THAT YOU COULD CONQUER OUR RACE."** At the edge of his consciousness, he could suddenly sense the arrival of Alliance reinforcements. **"BEHOLD YOUR FOLLY."**

 **Citadel, Local Space**

Vice Admiral Mikhailovich gazed at the scene before him from the bridge of his carrier, the Trafalgar.

Like many flag officers, he had been thoroughly briefed on the developments from Eden Prime and the resulting search for the renegade Council Spectre. His lip curled in disgust, seeing the force amassed by the rogue against his own civilization. And against the Alliance. It was a testament to the alien weakness he'd long despised.

 _Well,_ he thought, _time to take the first real step. Time to show these aliens what true strength really is._

 **Citadel, Wards**

Nihlus clutched at his chest, dropping the sniper rifle in the process as a lucky geth commando's rifle shot echoed over the din.

Anderson turned his head, seeing the Spectre he'd been fighting alongside to protect the crashed shuttle and the men and women aboard fall over.

 _Damn,_ Kryik thought as fluid spurted through his fingers. _I thought this would have happened a long time ago…not on the Citadel…of all places…_

"Goddamn it!" Anderson screamed as he scrambled to grab the dropped rifle. "Nihlus is down!"

"Missile!" the C-Sec officer yelped, futilely spraying his weapon at the incoming warhead.

Udina suddenly lurched upright and lunged in front of Anderson, throwing up his hands and creating a purplish barrier that the missile detonated harmlessly against.

"Ambassador!" Anderson gasped.

"Have to…stop…this…" the man strained, blood still trickling from his nose.

Sparatus picked off an overly-eager geth trooper before something caught his eye. "Oh, this isn't good."

Three geth Crawlers emerged from behind the surrounding buildings.

"Shit! Get away from the shuttle!" Anderson ordered.

Then a blaster ball zipped by and obliterated a Crawler and the building directly behind it. A massive white streak shot through another, dropping the unit like a stone. And the final geth heavy unit was hosed with plasma fire from above.

"What the hell?" the C-Sec officer wondered as he turned to look up.

A large humanoid mechanical unit _vaulted_ the shuttle and slammed down in front of the door, bodily blocking any geth from taking further shots. Three much smaller armored figures ran around the sides, each hefting a plasma rifle. And a final large and bulky simian figure, hefting a menacing looking green minigun in one hand and a blaster launcher in the other brought up the rear.

"Alliance," Valern whispered.

One of the smaller figures, satisfied that the enemy opposition was properly dealt with, turned and ran over to the group. "Saw you were under fire, sir! Thought you could use a hand!"

"Hell, Lieutenant," Anderson called back as the Skyranger dropship appeared overhead. "It's about time!"

 **Citadel, C-Sec Headquarters**

Tallus inclined his head from his position near the debris at the entrance, raising his rifle uncertainly.

"What's wrong?" Pallin demanded from just below, while the C-Sec officers around nervously clutched their weapons.

"I'm hearing gunfire," the other turian answered. "Sounds like someone's fighting a battle above us."

"That means the geth should be distracted, right sir?" an officer asked.

"Maybe," Pallin cautioned. "but not so distracted that they won't try to pick you off if they see you in the line of fire."

Tallus jerked as he heard a very familiar rifle crack. "Garrus!"

"Say what?"

"My son is here! I'd know that model rifle anywhere!"

"Wait!" Before Pallin could stop him, Tallus had already bulled through the debris and emerged on the surface, rifle up and ready.

Geth bodies littered the streets. As he watched, an angry krogan in red armor sent another geth flying into the flaming wreckage of a car. A quarian girl was furiously typing on her omnitool while several geth ballers moved around jerkily, hosing down any sign of enemy resistance.

And the father recognized his son, standing on the second floor of a shattered hulk of a restaurant, firing shot after shot into the distance. As he looked on, Garrus suddenly dove off the side before being surrounded in a blue glow. The corner of the edifice he'd been on was suddenly obliterated by a particle beam. As Garrus drifted to the ground, Tallus noticed an asari in a somewhat large Alliance battle uniform, hefting a plasma rifle in one hand.

"Dad!" the Spectre yelled, running over to hug his old man.

"Thank the Spirits you're alright!" Tallus breathed.

"Oh come on, you really have that little faith in me?"

"So I take it that we have you to thank for this?" Pallin gestured at the devastation around them.

"Nah, it was pretty much like that when we got here," Garrus replied.

"You forgot the car," Wrex pointed out.

"Hey, that was not my fault! You're the one that punched the accelerator!"

"And what about the fuel depot a few blocks away?" Tali noted with amusement.

"It was an opportunity! We needed to distract them!"

"I also don't think it was strictly necessary to have the Skyranger knock down the façade of that building over there," Liara indicated. "even if it did wipe out the geth in that area."

"Why are you all ganging up on me?" Garrus whined.

"They're just making sure credit goes where it's due," Tallus grinned.

"Not you too…"

 **Citadel, Presidium District**

With a gesture, another purple whirlpool materialized around the alien ship's armatures, shearing them off like paper streamers.

Having de-fanged the enemy ship, General Summers turned his attention back to the fleeing turian, only to note that he was long gone into the distance.

Saren spared a glance over his shoulder as he hauled ass away from that demonic human.

 ** _JUST LIKE YOUR BROTHER,_** the voice rumbled through his skull, sending shivers of terror down his spine. **_YOU PICKED A FIGHT WITH HUMANITY, AND NOW YOU WILL DIE FOR IT. AND YOU WILL DIE RUNNING LIKE A COWARD INSTEAD OF FACING IT LIKE A MAN. EVEN YOUR BROTHER WASN'T SO COWARDLY._**

Saren couldn't handle the taunting any longer. The disrespect of his beloved older brother's memory infuriated him despite the situation. "YOU'RE NEXT, OLD MAN! You're next!" he raged. "After I bring the Reapers through the Citadel, I'm going to come back and blow your senile brains out!"

 ** _BETTER MEN THAN YOU HAVE TRIED, SON. BETTER MEN THAN YOU, AND THINGS SO FAR BEYOND MEN YOU CAN'T EVEN BEGIN TO IMAGINE THEM. SHEPARD, KILL HIM!_**

"With pleasure, sir."

 _No,_ Saren thought, turning to face the source of that new voice. _Not her! Not now!_

But it was. Glaring at him from atop a building was a very familiar red-haired woman. Her eyes shone that same deadly purple as her superior, and the predatory grin on her face was a nightmarish one.

"I made a promise, Saren," she reminded him as she dropped three stories to the ground. **"and I intend to KEEP IT!"**

 **Cookies to anyone who gets the shout-outs.**

 **In case no one's noticed, the screaming in the heads of Udina and General Summers is a direct result of Sovereigns presence. It's also why General Summers didn't simply telekinetically dismember Saren. He was somewhat distracted.  
**

 **And it's not just Sovereign that's like this. EVERY SINGLE REAPER passively does this to psionic individuals. Unless they are Jaegers or have otherwise learned to block out other psionics.**

 **Now consider what that means for a race consisting ENTIRELY of psionics. Like the Ethereals. Get what I'm implying here?  
**

 **On another note, one reviewer asked why fusion lance projectiles have nuclear warheads embedded.**

 **Well if anyone remembers the Gunnery Chief from ME 2 lecturing Burnside and Chung on how they do not "eyeball it," under the Alliance, purely kinetic weapons are prohibited for use in space combat. They are only used for planetary bombardment, or on the very rare occasion that an Alliance Military ship needs to break up something like a comet or an asteroid.**

 **The nuclear warheads serve as a failsafe to prevent the round from "going off into deep space to hit somebody else in ten thousand years." If the firing computer does not overwrite the default range (for example, two light-seconds), the warhead activates and breaks the round into tiny fragments. Sure, now you have a cloud of rapidly moving metal and a burst of radiation, but it's better than a tungsten slug the size of a soda can smashing into a planet at relativistic speeds.**

 **This is in the extremely unlikely event that the firing computer misses its target.**

 **The second reason is obvious: upon impact with a target, the warhead goes off to overwhelm the target shields or kinetic barriers at the point of impact. With luck, enough of that energy will bleed through and severely damage the target. Or the fusion lance can be reconfigured to act like a neutron bomb: the main effect of the explosion is to kill off the ship crews without compromising the integrity of the ship in question. It's a great way to eliminate resistance and acquire enemy information systems.**

 **Or if the unfortunate target is near planetary atmosphere or inside of a nebula, the explosion can create a strong emp burst to short out enemy systems. Obviously, this is not something you want to do at point blank range.**

 **Finwee Lord of Long Winds: As much as I would love to answer your question about the Protheans directly, it would spoil the story I have planned. If you don't care about spoilers, feel free to PM me.  
**

 **Everyone else, please review!**


	22. Author's Note: Extortion

**Sorry, but this isn't a chapter.**

 **Go ahead, curse me out, it doesn't matter.  
**

 **I have the final chapter of the ME1 section written out, and with a nice juicy reveal to boot. But I'm not going to post it until New Years Eve.**

 **Unless I get 300 reviews before then.**

 **Yeah, I'm evil, aren't I?**

 **On a more serious note, I do appreciate the support you readers have shown me thus far. I promised to finish this section by New Years.**

 **And I guarantee that those of you who haven't been put off by my alterations to the characters will enjoy what I'm planning for ME2.**

 **So please, send me some of those warm and yummy reviews.**


	23. Geth, Weapons, and Armor

**Thank you, everyone. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a Happy New Year to you all!  
**

 **The end of ME1, and a very juicy reveal, as promised.**

 **Edit: to anyone who doesn't get why the chapter title is what it is, remember in chapter eight when Shepard tells Saren that nothing will protect him from her?**

 **Enjoy!**

Chapter Twenty One

 **Citadel, Trafalgar**

"Incoming fighters! They're going after the Bismarck, sir!"

"Castle flight, move to intercept!"

"Missile batteries locked and cocked, sir!"

"Target Tango group four," Mikhailovich ordered. Against his personal wishes, he knew that now was not the time to allow the remaining Citadel defenders to be obliterated.

"Missiles away!"

"Citadel Tower Control has locked down the station! There's still a group of enemy tangos inside!"

"Cobra squadron! There's your chance! Backdoor the station and reinforce the interior!"

"Tango group six is breaking off! They're preparing a microjump!"

"Ma'am," Mikhailovich addressed the asari field commander. "We're about to fire off an EMP barrage. I advise your forces clear the area so you don't get caught up."

The asari was momentarily thrown off screen as a geth gunboat suicidally crashed into the Destiny Ascension. _"That may prove difficult under the circumstances,"_ she replied.

"Ma'am, if your forces can't get clear, tell them to overload their kinetic barriers and purge the hull coolant," his XO advised. "That should give them enough protection against the blast."

The asari turned to the side and screamed something that the translators didn't catch.

"The group is almost ready sir," the junior officer relayed.

Mikhailovich eyed the tactical map. The geth were now fairly scattered, pulled apart from three sides. His close quarters units had been informed to move back, which was slightly exacerbating the problem, but there was little that could be done about that. He didn't want to fry his own units, after all.

"Final target uplinks completed!" the weapons control officer called.

"Withdraw all our fighters. Execute fire plan in twenty seconds."

It was a tense twenty seconds while the group's Firestorms warped out of the battle and reported in. Finally, every ship in the group fired their fusion lances at once.

The array of explosions had been calculated by the Trafalgar's computers to cover the maximum area and avoid EMF "spikes" that could affect the group or their putative "allies." In one fell swoop, nearly four hundred geth ships out of a remaining six hundred were wiped clean of resistance. Control systems shorted out. Automatic core containment measures failed. Capacitor bank safeties malfunctioned. Communications in the local area went completely black.

The geth were now gutted and disorganized. In one mighty attack. Something, he noted with great satisfaction, that the Citadel had not been able to do. _Weaklings,_ he sneered internally.

"Laser communications protocols online, sir!"

"We have them on the ropes. Time to finish them off, people."

 **Citadel, Presidium District**

Troopers fired rockets. Commandos tried to use their sniper rifles. A line of geth Crawlers opened fire on a particularly unfortunate strip club as he stumbled out. He used corporate security bypass codes to hijack any vehicle he saw and have the geth use them as kinetic weapons. Krogan clones converged on them, swarming her.

None of it did a damn thing to slow down the monster, the demonic hunter, the angry red-haired juggernaut that pursued him.

He dodged a geth baller that flew past, slamming into a delivery truck. He looked back as yet another vehicle plowed into her and exploded, only to see her slowly walking out, sporting only a new dent on her gauntlet.

A geth commando dropped down with a shotgun and fired a blast that could have sent a krogan flying. She created a psionic shield, absorbed the momentum of the shot, spun around and lunged out with her fist, shattering the chest plate and burying her hand inside its power core.

A geth dropship flew down and unloaded its contingent, which included a repurposed turian exoskeleton. The machine was now equipped with a special geth shield that the operator could use to block incoming fire and create a mass effect pulse to push back an enemy or projectile.

Shepard's first attack was repulsed, and she had to scramble to avoid the hail of minigun fire from the two krogan that accompanied the unit. She snarled and then used her enhanced strength to grab a vehicle and fling it at the machine.

Saren had been taking a precious moment to catch his breath and watched as the vehicle was repulsed right before the Alliance supersoldier plowed through the residual force and ripped off the arm holding the shield. The two krogan minigunners turned to target her, but ended up riddling the exoskeleton with fire. Shepard buried her hand in the skull of the left krogan, meaning he was as good as dead. The other was centering his minigun when the dropship plowed directly into the group, the geth pilot opting to try and crush her.

Silence reigned. Saren allowed himself a glimmer of hope that maybe that had done it. And then the wreckage shifted. The commander lifted it up, struggling even with her enhanced body and psionic strength, before giving a mighty heave and throwing it off her.

While the woman may not have been worse for the wear, her armor was indeed taking a beating. Not that it gave the turian much encouragement. With that strange power she possessed, he had a sinking feeling that even if she was completely naked, a shotgun blast to the chest wouldn't do more than annoy her at this moment.

 _Sovereign, if there's anything you can still do, help me! For the love of the Spirits, HELP ME!_

 **Citadel, Interior Space**

The machine ran through its runtimes, contemplating the best course of action to deal with this suddenly dire situation.

The pawn would not be able to defeat the humans. That much was certain. And neither would it be able to escape for long. The central controls for the Citadel were too far away to reach even if it simply cut and ran. The defenders and their allies would shoot down any transports.

But for the moment, that first human, the one who'd caused more damage to itself than an entire fleet, was occupied. The machine could ensure that with what little it had. And it could boost the capabilities of the pawn, perhaps just enough to deal with the second human.

Yes, direct intervention would be necessary.

 **Citadel, Presidium District**

Shepard slowly walked toward the object of her hatred, savoring the turian's fear as the man struggled to get away. This was it, the feeling of being an invincible predator stalking a helpless prey. It was the sensation that she'd come to cherish from her time in the hellhole that was the AITC.

Even now, the turian stumbled and turned to face her. His eyes shone with terror, and something else. Was that acceptance? Maybe he was accepting his fate.

Shepard blinked. Saren's eyes were actually glowing. And his skin was starting to steam a bit. A brown tone started to spread from the metallic lines on his body, at least where it wasn't covered with armor.

And now his throat was glowing as the turian opened his mouth in an inarticulate scream.

And then there was a wave of bluish-white. And Shepard found herself being thrown back to collide with a building. As she pulled herself out of the rubble, she saw that the turian was now glowing white through all his orifices. He also seemed to be bulked up somehow. And there was no expression on his face. No feeling at all.

 ** _"POWER OVERWHELMING!"_** he said in a warped voice that sounded nothing like himself. And then Shepard suddenly found herself staring at the turian up close and smelling ozone as the now-enhanced rogue Spectre was readying a punch.

Oh. That was not good.

Barely raising her psionic shield in time, she was still sent flying backward into the building, her left cheek numb from the impossible strength behind that blow.

"Gah!" Three walls crumbled as she smashed through them. She scrambled to her feet and tried to summon her mental reserves.

The keyword being 'tried.' With that same speed, the turian stabbed with his left hand, which she noticed the flesh had burned completely off to reveal a combination of bone and some strange cybernetic implants. The bony implement pierced through her chestplate, stopping at her reinforced sternum. Shepard gritted her teeth and ignored the pain, grabbed the turian by the neck, and punching him as hard as she could in the armpit area.

Now it was Saren's turn to be rapidly propelled away from his opponent. Shepard narrowed her eyes and focused on the turian as she raced toward him, snagging a large pipe from the gutted interior and swinging it into Saren's head.

It never made physical contact. Instead, she clashed against a white shield of some kind, and the impact actually bent the heavy duty metal pipe. Saren smacked into a truck at an angle that was definitely unhealthy.

She watched in amazement as the turian simply stood back up and cracked his neck. Whatever he was doing to himself, it actually made him her equal in combat. Or it was Sovereign's doing, she thought as she glanced at the Reaper.

She had no more time to contemplate as Saren charged forward once again.

 **Citadel, Interior Space**

The Cobra Squadron commander took in the sights as his destroyer exited the wormhole. The Alliance dropship pilots had been giving the Vice-Admiral constant updates on the situation inside, so he certainly wasn't going in blind.

There were seven ship-sized contacts in the vicinity. Two geth gunships currently in a mortal duel with a flight of Firestorms, three frigate-weight vessels, a carrier-type, and that "ugly mofo" of an alien dreadnought, as his executive officer put it.

And for his part, he had two frigates and two prowlers that had been fitted with the new plasma projectors, courtesy of Admiral Hackett himself.

He smirked, as the geth ships turned to face the newly arrived warships. They should have brought more friends.

 **Citadel, First District**

The bright green flashes caught everyone's attention, and Garrus's impromptu army of C-Sec officers all turned as one to look up.

"Kelah, they're more powerful than I thought!" Tali breathed in awe.

Tallus heard a strange noise and looked over at his son, who was doing a very good imitation of a needy and whiny Alliance dog. "Down boy," he smirked. "I doubt they'll ever let you of all people near that much firepower."

Wrex laughed. "You know, when I called you a pup, I didn't expect you to act like one!"

Garrus flushed and then looked studiously ahead in embarrassment. "Oh shut up…" he grumbled.

 **Citadel, Interior Space**

The ancient machine turned its sensors to the new arrivals, once again pondering the utter impossibility of what was happening. The Citadel had closed. There should have been no way for reinforcements to come in.

But they had. The lesser pawns knew of them, these humans, once again. They were more than just an unexpected force. They were a genuine threat to its mission. A threat on a scale never before seen. A threat they demonstrated by using weapons long considered impossible to create by any previous races.

In renewed desperation, the dreadnought exposed its main gun: a colossal laser emitter. It's drive core, long idle, now spun up to maximum capacity. Its kinetic barriers strengthened and the machine roared its defiance as the weapon fired.

The commander of the squadron was caught off guard as the blazing stream of photons consumed two of his ships, and all of the three hundred crew and officers aboard the prowler and frigate. _What?!_

 **Citadel, Presidium District**

The general observed the same thing. He felt the cessation of thought of the men and women of those ships. _Again,_ he thought. _Again, my people die in front of me!_

His psionic exertions had left him mentally drained. This level of power was something he'd only used once before, and nearly 170 years ago at that. But the exhaustion fell away as he summoned the last reserves of his will.

 **"REAPER! YOU HAVE COME TO CLAIM DEATH!"** he screamed, readying another tremendous display of power. **"LET IT BE YOURS!"**

 **Citadel, Interior Space**

The commander frantically ordered his other two ships to join the destroyer in attacking the dreadnought, hoping to get off his shots before that alien ship fired again. As soon as he saw the red glow on the front, he knew it was too late.

But the alien ship didn't shoot at his command. A purple glow appeared on the dreadnought, and the laser seemed to reflect right off it and destroy its own emitter.

 _Psionics!_ That had to be General Summers himself. He knew of no other psionic on the Citadel, and if there was one individual in all of existence who could pull off something like that, it would be humanity's greatest hero.

"Fire!" he ordered.

Three streams of plasma tore into the dreadnought, slagging the exposed internal weapons systems. The ship seemed to stagger a bit, and then began moving forward, obviously intent on ramming them.

"Switch to fusion lances! Fire!"

The ancient machine calculated again and observed that its final rush would be futile. As its sensors observed the energy buildup in the human warships, it had time to make one final reassessment.

These humans could be the end of its kind.

 **Citadel, Wards**

Even sheltered by surrounding buildings, the Councilors and their Alliance protectors felt the shockwave from three simultaneous contained nuclear explosions.

"Holy shit!" Anderson yelled. "They used fusion lances in here?!"

"That thing looked pretty tough, sir," the lieutenant noted.

"Your plasma cannons appear to have been insufficient," Valern commented. "I can't say I approve of the use of nuclear force, but I certainly could understand it when that ship survived the first salvo.

"What happened to that ship?" Sparatus asked. "It looked like its laser cannon exploded from the inside."

"That…was General Summers…" Udina managed to explain through the haze of the analgesics the medic had shot him with.

"The general did that?!" Tevos shrieked, looking paler than anyone had ever seen.

 **Citadel, Presidium District**

Shepard pulled herself out of the rubble and spared a glance over at the turian. They'd both been thrown around by that explosion, but with Sovereign's destruction, Saren was no longer empowered like before.

She used her right arm to fold her left at the elbow and then took a deep breath. Then she slammed her shoulder into the building and screamed as it popped back into place. Taking a moment to deal with the wave of nausea, she composed herself and then limped over to the turian responsible for everything. She winced and rubbed her thigh. That was a fractured femur. A _femur,_ the strongest bone in her augmented body, and it was cracked. That was in addition to the four broken ribs on her left side from that last side kick he'd landed on her.

Shepard shook her head. That Reaper was really something.

Saren fought his way through the wave of pain coursing through his body. Sovereign's enhancement hadn't been kind to it at all. And to his horror, it hadn't allowed him to finish the job. Shepard was walking toward him with a satisfied, if pained, grin.

"Die!" he screamed as he snatched his pistol and fired harmlessly at her head. "DIE!" The shots bounced off that same damned purple aura that surrounded her. "WHY WON'T YOU DIE?!" The gun overheated, and the trigger clicked uselessly. "Why won't you die?" he whimpered.

Shepard bent down and grabbed him by the throat with both hands. Her left stung and throbbed, and she could tell her grip was weaker than it should be, a sign of nerve damage. But at this point, it was meaningless.

"Behind this skull, there's more than flesh," she sneered. "Behind this skull, there's an IDEA, Saren. And ideas…are bulletproof."

A wet, sickening crack echoed off the surroundings, followed by the slick sound of bone sliding out of flesh. Shepard dropped the body and shook her gauntlets slightly. "Good riddance," she spat, before slowly walking back toward the ruined embassy building.

The general was pressed against an overturned vehicle, unconscious and clearly injured from the blast. Shepard looked him over before keying her miraculously still-functioning radio.

"This is Commander Shepard. General Summers is down. Get a bus over to the Embassy stat!"

 **Citadel, Presidium**

"Heads on a swivel!" Pallin snapped at the C-Sec officer as he strode into the chamber. "The Alliance may have won the battle for us, but the geth could still be out there!"

"Y-yes sir!"

The Executor met the gaze of the Destiny Ascension's commanding officer, who glared at him, having overheard his indirect slam of the Defense Fleet. He shrugged internally as he walked past her. It was the truth. If the Alliance hadn't been there, Saren's mad plan might have succeeded, and everyone BUT the humans would be doomed.

Garrus had told him everything. How Saren had been a mere puppet for that alien ship, how the Citadel was a giant trap, how the Reapers had been the ones to wipe out the Protheans, and whoever had preceded them, and so on. While he was too much the investigator to believe it all straight out of hand with little evidence, he could read body language. Garrus fully believed everything he told him, and so did that krogan, the quarian and the asari he'd brought with him.

He made his way over to a human officer in the corner, talking to a group of individuals who were obviously of lesser rank, given their deference. He warily eyeballed the large mechanical humanoid before addressing the man.

"Captain Anderson, I presume?"

"That's me," the brown-skinned human answered, holding out a hand in greeting. "And you are…"

"Executor Venari Pallin," the turian shook his hand. "head of Citadel Security. I'm told I have you to thank for keeping the Councilors safe."

"These boys helped out as well," Anderson informed him. "Lieutenant First Class Johnathan Archer, Navy Corpsman Leon McCoy, Warrant Officer William Riker. The big guy over there, they call him "Worf," for some reason, and the really big guy is Second Lieutenant Montgomery Scott."

"A pleasure," Pallin greeted. "Where's Nihlus? He was with you, wasn't he?"

"He bit the dust," Anderson replied flatly. "Geth sniper got him. Right before these gentlemen got there."

Pallin inhaled and cursed Saren yet again. "Well, he died doing his duty, like a turian should. I know he'd be glad to know that Saren failed in his mad plan."

"Yeah, he would," Anderson agreed.

"Well again, let me offer you my thanks. And now I have to go give the Councilors a status update."

The lieutenant waited until he walked off before turning to look at the captain. "Was there a reason you gave him fake names from Star Trek, sir?"

"I figured you'd like that better than if the Citadel knew you guys by sight," Anderson pointed out. "Besides, I liked that old show."

"Well I'll be," 'Riker' smirked. "Never seen a living fossil before."

"Watch it, or I'll bust your ass back to PFC," Anderson laughed.

"You want to switch services, sir? I thought Squids didn't like the mud," the lieutenant grinned.

"Boy, I could show you a thing or two about the mud…"

Several steps away, Pallin had the distinct feeling someone was putting one over on him.

Meanwhile, Commander Shepard stepped off the Skyranger onto the platform before turning to offer a hand to the figure behind her, who brushed it off.

"I can't show any weakness," he growled as he forced himself upright, to the protest of the medic behind him. "not where potential enemies can see it."

Shepard opened her mouth to protest, and then thought better of it when she considered her own injuries.

General Summers took a deep breath and steeled himself against the pain before walking past the Commander.

Everyone in the Presidium looked up over upon hearing the thunderous footfalls.

"Room, tench hut!" Anderson barked on reflex.

Everyone with prior military experience snapped to attention, even Sparatus.

"As you were," the general called, making his way over to the Councilors. "Funny, I thought civilians weren't supposed to jump to attention."

"Force of habit," the councilor muttered.

"General," Valern began, drawing himself as tall as he could. "on behalf of the Citadel and our civilization, we would like to thank the Alliance for helping to defend the Citadel, even if you only did so out of self-interest."

"Appreciated, for what it's worth," Summers replied brusquely. "Now I believe Commander Shepard has a debrief for you all."

"Whoa, you're starting without us, Commander?" Garrus' voice rang out as he walked in with Tali and Liara in tow.

"We couldn't find you earlier," Shepard answered.

"I was at Mymerus Hospital checking over Spectre Vasir and paying my respects," the turian explained. "I thought I would catch you there as well."

"I would have been there, but duty called," she indicated the general.

"It always does," Garrus muttered with a slightly bitter tone.

Tevos cleared her throat. "I, ah, believe you were about to debrief us, Commander Shepard?"

Shepard nodded. "As you know, Saren was obsessed with the Reapers. He wanted to bring them back and use them against all of us. He was searching for the Conduit, a mass relay made by the Protheans that connects to the Citadel, so he could infiltrate it and open it up for Sovereign, the Reaper that we destroyed during the battle."

"And what would 'Sovereign' have done after that?" Valern asked. "Because clearly just entering the Citadel was not the end goal in and of itself."

"Saren would have given Sovereign control of the Citadel," Garrus chimed in. "allowing that ugly bastard to bring all his Reaper buddies right here to the Citadel."

"How is that possible?" Sparatus wondered.

"While we were on Ilos," Liara spoke up. "we encountered a Prothean VI, Vigil. It told us that it was the keeper of the Conduit and what Saren intended to do with it. It also told us that the Protheans weren't the creators of the Citadel or the Mass Relays."

"What?" Tevos exclaimed.

"Yeah," Garrus continued. "According to Vigil, they were all created by the Reapers, and the Citadel is a giant trap. We were meant to find it, and make it the capital of our civilization. The Protheans fell for it back then, and the Reapers came through here, wiped it out, and stole the census data and every bit of information the Protheans had on their own empire."

"And the Reapers used it to wipe them out," Tali chimed in.

"Spirits above…" Sparatus gasped.

"A devious strategy," Valern agreed. "But that still does not answer the question of how giving 'Sovereign' control of the Citadel would have brought the Reapers here."

"The Citadel is a giant mass relay station that connects to Dark Space," Shepard replied. "Normally, the Keepers, which I understand are the little aliens that maintain this place, would respond to a signal sent by Sovereign and activate the Citadel and summon the Reapers."

"Normally," Valern repeated. "I assume from your choice of words that something went wrong with this arrangement."

"Not all the Protheans were wiped out," Liara took over. "The ones on Ilos escaped the purge. Vigil put them into stasis until after the Reapers finished and left the galaxy. The ones he was able to save finished the Conduit, used it to come here, and change the signal so the Keepers didn't respond to it this time."

"Which forced Sovereign to come up with an alternative. When Saren came across it, Sovereign indoctrinated him into acting as a puppet who could give it manual access. Then Sovereign could override everything and still bring all the Reapers back."

"And they would kill us all," Tali finished.

"But why?" Tevos asked. "Why do this? What do they have to gain from wiping us out?"

"Does that matter?" General Summers cut in. "You don't have to understand the why. In fact, sometimes it's best that you don't. All you really need to know is what they want to do to you."

"And what do you think these…Reapers…want to do to us all?" Valern queried.

The general snorted. "Isn't that obvious? Wipe us out, like they did to everyone who came before us."

"I take it then that you really believe this story, as fantastic as it is."

"I'm inclined to do so after hearing the same story from a raving madman, an ancient computer, a psionic plant and a race that's been around since before the Protheans that you thought you wiped out," Summers retorted. "When a bunch of different sources are singing the same song, there's probably a reason for it."

"Well regardless," Tevos said. "after Saren's failure, the danger has probably passed. There won't be any Reapers coming back."

"Oh there will be," Shepard countered, drawing everyone's attention. "You haven't seen what I have, in that Beacon. There are way more Reapers out there. You think we've beaten them?" she shook her head and gestured out the window. "All this happened over _one_ of them. The Protheans saw _thousands of them_. Whatever they're doing, they aren't going to stop it just because we killed _one measly Reaper._ "

"I've seen it too," Liara added. "And so did my mother. You have to believe me, Councilor, this isn't over. It's just the beginning."

There was a moment of silence. "Then what do you propose we do?" Sparatus asked carefully.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend?" Anderson put in. "As I see it, they'll want us all dead. Makes sense for us to join together."

"The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more, no less," Summers countered. "Considering the state of our respective civilizations, joining forces over something as…fantastical…as this won't go over well with either of our people."

"That, and the only proof you have is hearsay," Valern pointed out.

"Hearsay?!" Liara erupted indignantly. "We got it directly from a Prothean VI who was around fifty thousand years ago when it last happened!"

" _After_ Saren had already gone through and possibly tampered with it," Sparatus noted.

"But that wouldn't make sense!"

"And it wasn't tampered with!" Tali added. "I checked it myself."

"Ma'am," Pallin explained. "who else but you will know for sure? This is why evidence tampering is such a huge deal. We need to be absolutely certain."

"Tali," Garrus said. "I think what the Council is trying to say is that we would have to convince the people, and popular opinion is against it. The Alliance is what most people consider a hostile power. Our people won't be too eager to join up with them."

"But if the Alliance makes that offer, wouldn't that mean something?" Tali argued. "I mean if the _Alliance_ of all people wants to make nice and join forces with us, then they're really worried about something else out there."

"Or it could be a clever ruse to exploit our civilization," Valern countered. "That is another conclusion the public could reach, and instead of welcoming potential aid, they would be suspicious of it. The paranoia would only make things worse."

"But…but.."

"Miss Tali'Zorah, I think I speak for all of us when I say none of us personally doubt what you've told us," Tevos lied. "but the people will need more proof. What you propose is an enormous change, and the people will need to be absolutely sure of things before they would ever accept it."

"Then what do we do now in the meantime?" Anderson asked.

"I have a Council of my own to brief," Summers answered. "And the Councilors here have a city to rebuild. I think it'll be best to talk about this later."

"That's reasonable," Valern agreed. "Perhaps we'll reconvene within a week or two."

"Please pass our regards to the Ambassador," Tevos chimed in. "We wish him a speedy recovery."

* * *

"Your plan failed," she said. "Your puppet Saren failed to kill the general."

"The outcome was not entirely what we expected," he admitted.

"That's putting it mildly," she snapped. "All those resources, all these years on this scheme of yours, and for nothing! Do you realize how much exposure I risked to cover your operations all these years?"

"Well that is why we aimed to get you that position," he noted.

"I didn't get this to have it be blown by a long shot operation!" she hissed. "Now Harper will start to ask questions, and I might not be able to stop him from getting his answers! And Dr. Vahlen might be wondering things too, and I know better than anyone that she won't take anything that doesn't make sense!"

"You did offer a potential solution for dealing with that," he reminded her. "in your proposal for Project Thorian."

"That's years away, and who knows if it will pan out!" she protested.

"You're one of the foremost minds of humanity," he pointed out. "I'm certain you'll find a way to make it happen."

"There's the likely possibility that I won't!" she fired back. "And what then? All the gains we've made to rebuild after X-COM wiped us out will all be for nothing!"

"I think you worry too much," he rebuked. "This setback is not quite as serious as you think it is. We can still deal with the general. There are other ways."

"If you're suggesting that _I_ do the job, you're insane!" she growled. "There's a reason I've avoided getting too close to his level. If he suspects anything, we're done for!"

"And what about the psi-blockers that are standard for high level staff like yourself? That should keep you safe."

She snorted. "You really think that Summers would let people be able to completely hide things from him? In his position, I'd have put in a workaround just for me."

"Perhaps you're being a little paranoid," he chided.

"Or maybe not paranoid enough!" she fired back. "It's a _little_ different for you when it's your ass on the line! And it's NOT FUNNY ASSHOLE!" she shrieked when she heard a slight chuckle over the line.

"Levity aside," he continued. "there are other ways to eliminate him."

"I thought you wanted him to be killed by aliens so his death would be useful," she said sardonically. "If a human does the job, that could point back to us."

"And the investigation into the bribery on Eden Prime couldn't? Oh but that's right, you made sure it wouldn't."

"I can't do that for everything!" she protested. "I barely got in on the investigation into the Hegemony Remnant funding in time to alert Ubrect to clean up the evidence, and now Harper's aware of him much sooner than we planned for!"

"No plan survives contact with the enemy," he noted. "Surely you're aware of that? We'll just have to adapt to circumstances."

"Easy for you to say!"

Another of those infuriating chuckles. "Until next time, doctor." And the device shut off.

"That _lunatic!_ " she growled. "All this time, it's been my neck on the chopping block, not his!" She grabbed her head and looked in the mirror. _Calm down,_ she told herself. _You'll make it through this. You just have to be smart about it,_ she thought as she fixed her hair. _And you're very good at that right?_

She was so tense that she almost jumped through the ceiling tile when the alert tone on the intercom came through. After a moment for her heart rate to slow down to a more reasonable speed, she answered it. "Yes?" she asked with only a hint of irritation in her voice.

 _"Apologies, Dr. Core, but you asked to be notified if we found anything interesting on Project Thorian, and I couldn't find you at your office, ma'am,"_ her aide explained.

"Ah, that's okay," Dr. Core replied, grabbing her notes and tablet from her desk, and revealing a hexagonal token with a symbol of an eye in the upper half and a four pointed star in the lower half, split open and lying next to the report on Riyaan Har'al. "I just had some personal things to take care of."

 **Surprise! Did anyone see this coming? Why, I think not!**

 **If you look back VERY carefully, you might see the ONE hint that I dropped way back near the beginning. And you might not.**

 **Saren was a pawn, just like Sovereign thought of him. But even more than Sovereign suspected.**

 **Now given this, who else do you think might be in on this? And who do you think she was talking to?**

 **On the subject of the debriefing session, I tried to realistically portray how the politics would break down. And realistically, there's not much chance that the Council would ever sign off on joining with the Alliance.**

 **1) There's the hostility and xenophobia.**

 **2) There's the lack of predictability in certain aspects of the Alliance's conduct.**

 **3) There's the public reaction.**

 **The Alliance, in the interest of creating a solid spot on the "do not fuck with" list, has pretty well alienated the Council races. Now the leaders on both sides certainly aren't averse to working together to get things done (a situation that I'm sure occurs frequently in the US Congress), but popular opinion and their political bases are much less reasonable. There simply isn't the popular support for that.**

 **Unpopular acts create civil unrest and conflict, which only makes situations worse. And politicians in democratic systems of government have to appeal to their political base of support in order to remain in office to get anything done.**

 **The Council won't sign off on it because it could cost them the ability to guide their civilization along the safest possible path. And the Alliance won't because the people would probably riot either due to the scope of the galactic threat or from how unpopular collaborating with the "enemy" is. In that sense, the Alliance has dug itself into a bit of a hole.**

 **Angeloux: I'm glad you like my story, and flattered that it is good enough for you to make an exception to your policy.**

 **FlyingFish1991: Wow, knowing that this is being read in Antarctica is really something. I appreciate your readership.**

* * *

 **Alright, this has been a tough six months, but I got it done. I'm going to be taking a hiatus from this to figure out exactly how I want ME2 to go. It will be a bit, so bear with me.**

 **The way I see it, ME1 was the easy part. All I had to do was pretty much just rewrite the storyline. But ME2 is the meat of the franchise. Most of the story is all the little side issues involving the squadmates that coalesces into the epic Space Opera that Mass Effect turned into. I have some very special plans for characters like Tali, Morinth, Kai Leng, and LEGION. What are they? Stick around.**

 **I'm going to add another thing: the way I see this entire story ending, it will not be a happy one. At least ten named characters that you all know and love will die. Painfully. So if that isn't your thing, sorry in advance. But war is not pretty.**

 **My goal is to make this a compelling and morally complex story. The reveal? Core and her group have their viewpoints and reasons, some that obviously people won't agree with, and some that make sense. EXALT is not straight up "evil" in this story. Neither are the Batarians. Neither are the Council Races. And the Alliance certainly isn't a paragon among civilizations. The only faction that is close to being the absolute evil in this story will be the Reapers, and that's because I'm going to rewrite them to be Eldritch Abominations.**

 **You've seen part of it. And you may have noticed that not once did Sovereign talk to Shepard, like in the game. Harbinger won't do that either. None of the Reapers will. They don't talk to the races they harvest anymore than farmers talk to their harvest of crops. Their intentions should be alien, unknowable and mysterious. I feel that Bioware was aiming for that impression, but it fell short for me personally because the Reapers became personable and understandable, in a sense.**

 **So anyway, goodbye for now. I don't know when I'll pick up again, but hopefully soon. And let your imaginations run wild. Who will live? Who will die? Who do you want to live or die? I look forward to the feedback.**

 **Review!**


	24. (Tentatively) Setting the Groundwork

**This is a short chapter intended to start laying out the story threads for ME2. It may be subject to change.**

 **It will also be a while before I put out the next chapter. I'm still working out how I want everything to go.**

 **Enjoy!**

Chapter Twenty Two

 **Palaven**

"Welcome home, sir," General Victus called as Sparatus exited the shuttle. "Vakarian, nice to see you."

"Something tells me we're not going to enjoy this upcoming meeting," Garrus muttered. "Maybe it's the fact that a decorated general officer is our gopher."

"Or the recent revelations of psionics," Sparatus fired back. "Or the fact that you were demanded to report to the Conclave of Primarchs by name."

"Or all of the above," Victus confirmed as both his and the Councilor's bodyguards joined into a single formation around them.

The group entered the austere-looking building and made their way into a large room to stand on a dais before a panel of Primarchs and senior Hierarchy officers.

"Thank you for coming here on such short notice," the voice of Primarch Fedorian rang out. "I understand we all have things to do, so let's make this quick. We've heard the reports of the attack, but we'd like to hear from you."

Garrus snorted. "I can't tell you much about the initial attack, since I was on Ilos at the time, but I can safely say that the Alliance saved us when they came in to kill Sovereign."

"I think that's readily apparent," Admiral Vasik Cyrin noted dryly. "But we aren't here to discuss how the Alliance swooped in to save the day. We called you here because of your opportunity to observe the Alliance military in action. You both have been able to see how their elite forces conduct themselves, and you can both attest to these 'psionic' abilities they possess. Therefore, your observations are crucial to consider as we begin to formulate countermeasures against them."

"Really?" Garrus replied in disdain. "We're already thinking of stabbing them in the back right after we just got done cooperating with them against Saren?"

"They are not allies, Spectre Vakarian," Primarch Lenis Etrusia reminded him. "They regard our civilization as a potential enemy power just as much as we do."

"Ma'am, I would beg to differ," Sparatus disagreed. "While we regard them as the most dangerous of potential enemies, I think we just barely register to them. In my personal judgement, General Summers would have sent in a team to search our territory regardless, our military response be damned. And you have to admit that compared to their level of technology, we don't give them much reason to care."

"Which makes it all the more important for us to take whatever avenues are available to strengthen ourselves," Fedorian rumbled. "The Citadel needs something that can stand on par with the Alliance, if for no other reason than to assure our people that we can keep them safe. And this latest incident with the traitor hasn't helped matters."

Garrus grimaced inwardly, acknowledging the point. "I'll tell you right now, Commander Shepard isn't exactly a stellar example of how the Alliance fights. She gets away with charging the enemy straight up because she can just laugh it off. Everyone else just fights the same way we do: cover, planning, steady fingers and luck. The only difference is that the Alliance has better weapons tech."

"And psionics," General Orina noted, "and genetic enhancement technology, and a keystone element with an energy density likely to be an order of magnitude greater than Eezo, and superior methods of interstellar travel."

"As ever, you are the voice of optimism, general." Fedorian dryly acknowledged. "The point stands. We need to do something to bring ourselves closer to their level. The one thing that I suspect to be within our grasp is a possible countermeasure to their vaunted psionics. In your debrief, Councilor, you stated that Ambassador Donnel Udina had quite the adverse reaction to the Reaper's arrival on the Citadel. You also told us that Udina was able to generate a barrier of some kind that protected your group from geth attack. Coupled with the fact that there are no known human biotics, it's very possible that Udina is a psionic, and that psionics are vulnerable to Reaper technology."

"You can't be serious!" Garrus cut in angrily. "You want to create a counter force of soldiers augmented with Reaper tech? Sir?!" he added belatedly.

"That is one possibility," the Primarch admitted.

"Can I just say that it would be a terrible idea? Look what that Reaper tech did to Saren!"

"By all accounts, that Reaper tech allowed the traitor to fight on par with Commander Shepard," Colonel Zyrene Hesker interjected. "Mental instabilities aside, if we could figure out a way to replicate that without the self-immolation of limbs, it would give my special operators a huge boost in combat."

"All due respect, ma'am," Garrus addressed his former commander, "you haven't seen what that stuff does to people. Virtually all Reaper technology somehow brainwashes people over time into serving them."

"So we try to handle it remotely," Fedorian replied. "In any case, this won't be solely a Hierarchy venture. The Republics and the Union will be working with us on this."

"You already decided on this before you called us here," Sparatus realized.

"I don't like the idea of using unknown and subversive technology either, but this is something we need. We'll have some of the best experts from the Asari and Salarians working with us. All we need is a trainer, someone who is very familiar with Alliance doctrine…"

Garrus felt eyes boring into him from all sides. "I don't really have a choice here, do I?" He growled.

 **The Rayya, Laboratory**

"The geth think WE committed a crime?" Rael'Zorah repeated as he tinkered with an inoperative geth component.

"Yes, father," Tali nodded. "LEGION was saying that 'creator killed creator' in pursuit of geth."

Rael thought for a moment. "I suppose that means the geth were looking into our system of laws in the aftermath of the Morning War. Interesting, but not altogether relevant."

"What do you think that means? Were some of our people trying to protect the geth, and did we kill them as well? Were we the ones who started the Morning War?" Tali asked with a moderate amount of distress.

"Does it matter, Tali?" Rael twisted his hands to produce a satisfying click and withdrew. "Our people have been banished from Rannoch by the geth. We are stuck wandering the stars, and we have no place to call home except these aging rust buckets. The past is the past. Right now, we need to survive so we can take back our home."

"And how are we supposed to do that?" Tali demanded. "You saw the records I have! You saw what the geth have done to themselves. We don't know how many of them there are. We don't know how strong they really are. But you want us to fight them? What if there's a way to get them to stop? In their own words, they're after us because we committed a crime. They want justice. Maybe if we give it to them, we can reason with them and stop the fighting!"

"How do you know that this LEGION was telling the truth?" Rael pointed out slowly. "Surely the geth aren't unfamiliar with the concept of lying. And as machines driven by logic and utilitarianism, I don't think they'd be averse to trying to sow dissent amongst us to keep us from being a threat."

"Yeah, our people are _totally_ a threat to them in these envirosuits and these 'aging rust buckets,'" Tali fired back. "We can barely feed ourselves, and we die if someone puts even one hole in these stupid suits. Commander Shepard fought a geth that ripped off its own arm and still kept going. LEGION took the kind of firepower we'd use on starships before going down."

"You are right that we aren't much of a threat to them," Rael admitted, "but our potential allies are. As a result of your contributions and in light of the geth attack on the Alliance, the humans may give us aid in the near future. And then we'll be much more of a threat. And I'm sure the geth know that by now. The humans have the strength and will to do whatever it takes to win."

"They might not help us if they think we provoked the geth into attacking us in the first place."

"So don't tell them."

"You sound like you don't give a damn that we might have tried to exterminate a sapient race!" Tali exclaimed.

"And you're starting to sound like Zaal'Koris," Rael noted reprovingly. "The geth are our _enemies,_ Tali. They are the ones who drove us off Rannoch. They are the reason we are stuck here. Like it or not, sapient or not, they are the obstacle our people need to overcome. The one place in the galaxy that our people could survive without these suits is under geth control. Talk won't solve anything. If the galaxy has taught us anything, it's that we need strength to survive, not words."

Tali threw up her hands in frustration. Rael gazed at her retreating figure. "You care too much, Tali," he murmured, almost to himself. "That is your strength, but also your greatest weakness."

* * *

 _Following Saren's attack on the Citadel, the existence of Psionics is revealed to the galaxy. A tremendous social backlash against humans erupts in Citadel and Terminus Space, forcing many humans to retreat back to the Alliance despite the Citadel's attempts to pacify the public and thus avoid the loss of potential psionic humans in their culture._

 _The Citadel is quickly rebuilt with Alliance aid and contractors, though nearly two years are spent repairing and rewiring much of the station's power grid and communications systems damaged by the secondary effects of the Fusion Lance fire._

 _The Alliance decides to place a garrison of marines around the rebuilt Embassy to serve as additional security and protect incoming refugees from altercations with the Citadel populace. Major Armando-Owens Bailey is placed in command of the garrison._

 _Vice Admiral Mikhailovich and the 69th Assault Group receive accolades and honors from both Alliance Command and the Citadel for their service and the loss of seven ships in the course of defending the Citadel from the geth fleet._

 _The Citadel enacts new laws greatly restricting private space travel in response to the destruction of Adogene. As a result, a large number of angry citizens depart for Terminus space, determined not to give up their pilot licenses or ships._

 _Salvage teams scour the Citadel for weeks, removing radioactive debris and hull fragments of the destroyed Reaper._

 _The Hierarchy, Republic, and Union's naval forces are placed on high alert for follow-up attacks by geth forces._

 **2185**

 _Following extensive study of the geth commander chassis, the Alliance produces a new generation of heavy assault armor and an upgrade module for its existing forces. The "pulse shield" module proves to be extremely popular in simulated testing against heavy ordnance and grenades, leading to its rapid adoption as standard for frontline units._

 _Midway Station, an Alliance communications (and electronic intercepts) platform that serves as a waypoint for travel between Shanxi and the Citadel, becomes the site of a concentrated pirate attack. The Second Fleet reveals several new upgrades. While the pirate fleet included a number of VI piloted "banzai craft," they and the various missiles fired at the Second Fleet were rendered useless by Selective Pulse Shielding technology. Subsequent attempts to flee the ill-advised battle were nullified by the use of Mass Effect Retractor Beams on the part of the Alliance. In footage of the battle, four destroyers are observed using tractor beams to literally rip apart the last of the Hegemony Remnant's old dreadnaughts._

 _The Alliance announces the creation of the MEC Soldier in collaboration with the Cydonians. The first Cydonian mind inserted into a fully artificial chassis chooses the name EDI._

 _In the aftermath of the Alliance flaunting new technologies, the Citadel furiously pursues its own versions of the Pulse Shield and Retractor Beams. Once again, due to an insufficiently dense energy source, the Citadel's versions are inferior to those of the Alliance in terms of recharge time and power yield._

 _Hierarchy forces begin fielding reverse-engineered versions of the geth's upgrades to the combat exoskeletons. The Salarian Union reports promising initial results using borrowed prototypes and combat-oriented VIs._

 **Noveria, Port Hanshan**

Grainy images flickered across the screen as she scrolled through the footage, searching for evidence. Finally, she saw it: an asari that most would not have recognized, but she could not fail to.

After all, what mother would not know the face of her daughter?

 **Unknown location**

The man stumbled out of his room, his face ashen. The closest thing he'd ever experienced to this had been on a job to obtain high-level corporate files for a rival company, but that was far from the implications of this.

"Finally!" a woman called, hearing his door open. "Your dinner's getting cold, Keiji!"

"Kasumi…"

"Yeah, now come on and…" Kasumi stopped chattering upon seeing Keiji's face. "What's wrong?"

The man composed himself quickly, adopting an expressionless face. "We have to move…now. I don't think we're safe here."

"Does it have to do with those files?"

"No time!" he growled. "The people I stole them from are going to come looking for us!"

As the couple began gathering their equipment to leave, Keiji's computer screen stayed on in his room. A small icon flickered on screen before vanishing as the accompanying program trap buried in the files executed itself. A red hexagon and black eye in the center.

 **2188**

 _After a series of attacks on human colonies in the Terminus systems by unknown parties, the Alliance announces an impending investigation into the matter. This is met with strong protests from the Citadel on the grounds of territorial sovereignty and provoking the various criminal groups under the banner of Aria T'Loak, the Queen of Omega._

 _Unknown to the public, Alliance Intelligence also detected shadowy incursions near the newest border colonies that failed to match up with pirate or geth signatures._

 _Captain Erin Shepard, under the command of Admiral Steven Hackett, is detached from the Fifth Fleet and assigned to the investigation as part of a compromise on the part of the Citadel. Once again, Spectre Garrus Vakarian is embedded on the Alliance warship as it sets off to patrol the independent colonies._

 _Codex: Pulse Shield  
_

 _Where Static Shields merely form a barrier against incoming fire to lessen its effectiveness, Pulse Shields are designed to fire that barrier outward as a counter-force. Pulse Shields are effective counters to grenades, rockets, missiles, mortars, and biotic attacks. Projectiles with a kinetic energy above a certain threshold are automatically repelled by a burst of Dark Energy from charged Element Zero filaments in the armor. The pulse can also be triggered manually to deal with grenades or melee attackers, as well as to provide a burst of speed in a given direction. However the latter is usually impractical for normal foot soldiers._

 _The downside of Pulse Shields is that they cannot defend against gunfire, which makes staying in cover even more of a necessity for soldiers with this module. It also has a significant recharge time of around thirty seconds for an Alliance Soldier in standard Carapace Armor, and a large Element Zero signature._

 _Codex: Mass Effect Retractor Beams_

 _Reverse engineering of the Geth Commander platform's mechanical biotic abilities has produced a treasure trove of new weapons and technologies. And one of the most far-reaching is the Tractor Beam._

 _Applying lasing techniques to the energy fields given off by Element Zero produces a tight beam of attractive and repulsive forces that can be used to manipulate objects without physical contact._

 _The Tractor Beam has begun to replace docking armatures, large vices and cranes, medical restraints and all kinds of other tools used with the potential for causing damage to the materials handled. It has also been implemented as a weapon on Alliance warships, and more recently, Hierarchy warships._

 _Curiously, the Tractor Beam energies severely interfere with Mass Effect Drive technologies, which makes it impossible for pirate forces engaged with new Citadel or Alliance ships to escape once caught._

 **So who is that on Noveria? And what does this mean for Kasumi's mission later on?**

 **What is Garrus involved in? And what will Tali's personal mission be?**

 **Read and review!**

 **EDIT: A guest reviewer asked me why Pulse Shielding wouldn't work against gunfire. The answer is power consumption. Pulse shielding both requires more energy, straining armor generator capacity, and a controlled release of that energy all at once, which takes time to recharge.**

 **Standard armor does not come equipped with multiple banks of power capacitors to allow rapid reuse of Pulse Shielding. Once used, it must recharge. To save energy, the shield module is programmed not to operate against gunfire, which means soldiers are reliant on cover and their own armor to defend against shrapnel and bullets. As far as grenades and guided explosives, the pulse shielding is meant to push them away or pre-detonate them so that the explosion occurs farther away and the soldier doesn't get hit by a large chunk of flying metal.**

 **Of course, if you have a larger power generator like the kind mounted on vehicles, bunkers or spacecraft, you can say "fuck power conservation" and use it repeatedly against even the smallest threats. But soldiers in the field with personal shield systems do not have that luxury.**


	25. Oh it's ON, now

**And here's the beginning of ME2.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Twenty Three

 **Unknown Location**

In the midst of a large and darkened room, a hologram of a figure appeared. All present easily recognized the man depicted. Who could fail to know the face of the last war hero?

"Hello, general," one individual spoke.

 _"Chairman,"_ Summers nodded.

"You'll be happy to know that our colony representatives are reporting seventy percent readiness for the oncoming threat. However, some have expressed concern for the apparent need to sacrifice their systems as bait."

 _"The locations of Elysium, Eden Prime, and Shanxi are known to outsiders,"_ the general replied. _"Shanxi, more than anything else is the most likely target, but all three would be near the top of the priority list simply because they are there. They are the most exposed territory an enemy has to attack. Rather than try to pointlessly defend the first beachheads, it's better to make them a trap for the enemy."_

"That is understandable," another person noted. "but placing a mass relay in-system and blowing it up to destroy the enemy means we lose a planet, and all the time and infrastructure we've invested."

The general shrugged. _"War is never without sacrifice. We can always build a new colony."_

"A star system as a sacrifice seems a rather excessive one," a third individual retorted.

 _"And we are up against a race of robotic starships that numbers at least in the tens of thousands. Possibly even millions,"_ Summers bit back evenly. _"That's a rather excessive enemy. And will require excessive sacrifices to defeat, no matter how you cut it. We'll be throwing systems and fleets at them to drive them back and buy our people time. But we need to do it intelligently. And making those three systems very juicy bait so we can cause them some form of mass casualties is more intelligent than trying to buttress every colony we have against attack. As I said: people know where those planets are. And knowing is half the battle."_

"I would think the enemy would be aware of the risks of reaching for those colonies as well," a female voice pointed out.

The general nodded. _"We are taking that into account. I am of the opinion that the recent attacks on Terminus System humans are part of enemy reconnaissance efforts. With the reveal of psionics five years ago, the enemy would want to look for any examples of them to study. And seeing how we're the only visible race with these abilities, we're the natural choice. Factoring against that is the likelihood of us letting psionic individuals leave our territory, but there is still the outside chance they might find someone with potential that we missed. Against that possibility, Director Harper currently has undercover field agents scouring the Terminus Systems. I imagine they have orders to capture or eliminate any people they find. Regrettable, but necessary."_

"General," a fifth member added their voice to the mix. "while we all understand the necessity of the actions you recommended, I must point out how much of a strain it has been on our economy and resources to carry them out. Our people can only do so much with what we have, and history has taught us that what follows in the wake of war is economic chaos."

 _"You have to be alive to deal with that chaos._ "

"Yes, but we also want to minimize it if at all possible. We don't know when this threat will arrive, nor do we know the full scope of it. I think it would be wise to ally with the Citadel races against the Reapers."

"I disagree," the head of Alliance Intelligence interjected. "The Citadel is, compared to us, technologically inferior by about three decades. If we took them as allies, we would have to bring them up to parity, wasting valuable time and resources. Not to mention the fact that our cultural relations with them are just short of hostile and by no means friendly. That would make significant cooperation very difficult."

"I'm not saying that we bring them up to our level. When this threat arrives, we will all have a mutual enemy. And while they don't have the same quality of technology, they have quantity of people. If I recall correctly, their combined races outnumber us about 9:1. A temporary alliance would boost our numbers ten times over."

 _"It would also vastly increase the amount of territory we would have to help defend,_ " Summers countered. _"Our forces and methods are tailored specifically to our own situation and territory, not theirs."_

"This is an issue to be discussed at length," the chairman broke in. "We can discuss its merits and drawbacks at a later date. Right now, this was meant to be a quick update on the civil situation and the pending military preparations."

 _"Well on the military side, we've moved the AITC to a new location, and we're currently evaluating our first penal battalions. Pending approval, we'll start making them in force and assign them to the three colonies along with older hardware."_

"Are you confident that they will fight?" the second voice asked. "Considering their status as condemned criminals, they might not be so inclined to help."

 _"We offered each one of them a pistol with one round. Everyone defiant enough to stick it to us already took the easy way out. The ones who were left were told that if they survived their time, they would have their records expunged and they could start fresh."_

"I assume that there's a low possibility of keeping that promise," the fifth voice noted sardonically.

The general shrugged. _"It's not like we'll just dump them on Elysium and leave them there. If they put up a good fight or the Reapers don't send a large force, we'll have an assault group on standby waiting to rescue them. There's a low possibility, but still a possibility nonetheless._ "

"And suppose those criminals go back to their ways once returned?"

 _"Their basic training is much more…heavy-handed than normal in order to break them of their tendencies,"_ Summers replied. _"We want to make sure they're a coherent and sufficiently disciplined force to offer decent resistance, and that means instilling respect for the chain of command. The penal officers are drawn from the same pool. They just happened to previously have been work crew leaders in the camps, promoted for good behavior and getting results. Since the recruits are used to working under them and the officers are in the same boat, there should be minimal problems getting them to work as a unit. And we do have plenty of experience helping veterans ease back into society. All else fails, we still have the option to reinstate their sentence, or give them a more abbreviated one."_

"I see you've given this considerable thought."

 _"More like we're making them an offer they can't refuse. They want to live more than they want to escape us, and we explained our wartime prisoner policy to them. Either certain death at our hands, or the possibility of death at the hands of the Reapers. Naturally, the latter comes with the possibility of life."_

Yet another individual spoke up. "I've heard rumors of a proposal to recall old veterans back to service. What do you have to say on that?"

 _"With our MEC Soldier augmentations, we no longer need to create huge cybernetic suits for our people. Now we can create smaller combat prosthetics that give our troops biotic abilities similar to what the Citadel races have. Returning veterans and disabled individuals now have a way to contribute on the field. With the advances we've made thanks to Meld and Ethereal bioscience, post-surgical recovery takes only a few days, and training can begin immediately afterward. Our test cases went from near paraplegic status to combat ready with biotic training in approximately two months."_

"Quite a promising development," the woman noted. "I look forward to seeing if it can deliver."

 _"Finally, you were all briefed on Captain Erin Shepard's mission into the Terminus Systems to look over the independent colonies, right?"_

 **The Normandy, Bridge**

"Just like old times, eh commander?" Garrus commented.

"That's _captain_ to you," Shepard corrected him as she examined the map. "and it's not quite like that when we're missing an asari, a quarian and a krogan."

"Yeah, I guess you're right. Plus we aren't chasing an insane turian traitor this time around."

Shepard looked over with a slight smirk. "I wouldn't rule that out yet," she said playfully.

Garrus felt a chill run down his neck as the woman turned her attention back to the map. _Does she know? Does the Alliance know about it?_

Shepard eyed the arrangement of colonies before making her decision. "Alright Joker, let's hit up Nova Bastion."

 _"Aye aye, ma'am!"_

 **The Normandy, Executive Office**

Commander Pressly grumbled as he wrote up the latest findings, or lack thereof. One downside to being promoted up the ladder was the increase of paperwork and deskwork he had to deal with. Not for the first time, he wished he had someone he could push part of this onto. Why the blazes couldn't the Sensor Officer write up the damned report? He was the one looking at the instruments.

Two weeks into their tour of the Terminus Systems had earned them little in the way of intelligence. Of the two colonies and four "outposts" visited, all showed signs of initial armed resistance to whatever had attacked, but there was no trace of any of the humans who lived there. No blood or bodies. And no alien traces either. Pirates were normally far too undisciplined to police themselves after combat, and from what Cerberus reported, no major criminal organization appeared to be involved in these attacks.

Pressly leaned back after hitting "send," rubbing his face. Then he pushed off his chair and walked over to the Mess Hall where he sat down with the captain and the Spectre.

"A whole lot of nothing," he grumbled into his coffee. "I get why Admiral Hackett thinks it's something to do with the Reapers, but we don't have a clue how they might be doing this. A giant mechanical squid is hard to miss and should leave _something_ behind after an attack."

"Maybe the Reapers have a third party doing the work," Garrus pointed out as he examined something on his omnitool. "Sovereign didn't seem to mind getting the geth to pitch in when Saren was heading things up."

"You think the geth would clean up after themselves like this?" Shepard asked skeptically. "I know I wouldn't. If you have to go loud on a mission, you're going to leave so many traces that there's no point in policing the scene afterward."

"Yeah well on the other hand, you think a two-kilometer alien dreadnought would do it either? It's a little hard to have this kind of finesse when your 'fingertips' are the size of a car. From what we know, the geth are the only available option, even if they don't fit."

"Nobody's seen them since the attack on the Citadel," Pressly mused. "They haven't even gone after the Quarians. I wonder what they're doing now."

"That one super-geth seemed to think that Sovereign was unbeatable," Shepard recalled. "Maybe after we beat it, they reconsidered their chances of taking on the galaxy."

"That's what Tali thought when I ran into her last year," Garrus told them.

"Been keeping tabs on our favorite quarian girl, Vakarian?" Shepard gave the turian a knowing smirk.

"H-hey! Not like that!" Garrus sputtered. "I just said I ran into her, and besides, she's a little young for me!"

"I don't know. You two seemed pretty close after she patched you up twice from your flying lessons with the geth."

"Great," Garrus groaned. "First my dad, now it's you. Give me a break already."

Commander Pressly, ever the professional, recentered the discussion on the mission at hand. "We'll have to find some indications sooner or later," he muttered. "They can't do it right every time."

"Yeah, everyone runs out of luck at some point," Shepard acknowledged.

As the Normandy exited the wormhole into another star system, alien sensors registered its presence. A large craft, hidden in an asteroid field, sat still as its crew watched and waited for the trap to be sprung. Finally, when the Alliance prowler reached the Closest Point of Approach, the alien ship sent a signal to a colossal device that had been concealed under a cloak. That device began to power up.

Garrus scanned another dossier he'd long since memorized, contemplating his next action. _Should I tell her about them? The Alliance definitely would want to take these guys out. But it is a top secret military program…hell with it. They never should have done it in the first place. Besides, I'm sure the Salarians got whatever data they need._

"Hey Shepard," the red-head looked up. "I got something you guys-"

Everyone was thrown to the deck as the Normandy lurched suddenly. _"Enemy contact!"_ Joker's voice called over the intercom. _"Huge unknown Element Zero signature! Brace for combat maneuvers!"_

The alien device reached operational status and began to emit a far-reaching chaotic wave of Dark Energy that fluctuated at random intervals. At the same time, the alien ship activated its engines and screamed toward the Normandy while its particle beam cannon began to heat up.

Pressly picked himself up and sprinted to the bridge, surprisingly beating out both the captain and the Spectre. The trio arrived just in time to hear another crew member shout out a warning. "Second enemy contact! Cruiser-type! High energy build-up in the bow!"

 _"Engaging the drive!"_

And that was when everything went wrong. The wormhole drive attempted to open a hole in space-time and succeeded…for an instant too small to be useable. The pulsing waves of Dark Energy spiked at that particular moment, effectively slamming it shut before the Prowler could move through it. Meanwhile, the alien cruiser's capacitor banks discharged into the accelerators as the ballast tanks injected extremely high-pressure gases into the cannon. The stream of particulate matter invisibly tore through the inter-stellar medium and began colliding with the Normandy's right nacelle.

Within a microsecond, the stream sliced through it, aided by the momentum of the cruiser itself. Before it sheared off however, the beam struck a particularly sold part of the ship's frame and partially deflected off it, skimming the bridge section and rocking the ship.

Pressly's last sight was of the bridge rail shooting into his face as his arms failed to prevent his forward motion. "Commander!" a female first lieutenant yelled as she scrambled from her station to reach the man.

Shepard steadied herself and hauled Garrus to he feet before opening her mouth to demand a status report. That demand died on her lips as she eyeballed the bridge computer's ship display. She closed it for a moment, and then made her decision. "Escape pods, now!"

Somehow, over the chaos, another crewmember heard her, and slapped the evacuation alarm. "That way!" she pointed while shoving Garrus in that direction. "Go!"

Without waiting to see if he was obeying, She hauled her executive officer onto her shoulders and sprinted to the cockpit. "Joker! Time to leave!"

"Just…a bit…more…" Joker strained as he desperately attempted to maneuver the ship clear of both enemy fire and the strange energy field interfering with the ship's drive.

"Joker!" Shepard yelled.

"Damn it ma'am, I'm trying to get us away from that ship so we can safely eject the pods!" he snapped. "We're clear! Jumping!"

The Normandy managed to make it to a point where the alien device's field of effect tapered off and promptly vanished to reappear inside the former outpost's atmosphere. The sudden shock applied to the ship as it abruptly encountered material resistance to its momentum finished what the alien cruiser's particle beam had started, irreparably damaging the ship's control surfaces and propulsion systems. Slowly, the atmosphere arrested its velocity and the ship began a long and uncontrolled dive toward the surface.

If the alien ship commander had possessed the independence of mind to curse, it would have as it lost track of the Normandy. The same planetary atmosphere that obliterated the ship's chances of surviving also served to shield it's presence from sensors.

Joker toggled the hyperwave distress signal, then swore and slammed his fist on the console. "Fuck! The signal isn't active!"

"I'll handle it," Shepard ordered as she stowed her unconscious XO in the cockpit escape pod. "You strap yourself in and get out of here!"

Once again, without waiting for an answer, she turned tail and raced toward the rear of the ship. As she ran, she noted with satisfaction that the escape pods were all being safely ejected. Then, she saw the hyperwave device and reached for the manual activation lever just as the ship's elerium core activated its safety protocols and annihilated itself with antimatter.

While the core's shielding prevented the gamma ray emissions from killing her, the ship seemed to jolt toward her just as she grasped the lever and pulled down. Her head, even protected with an exosuit helmet, smashed into the wall hard enough to both knock her out and embed herself in said wall. The explosion also had the effect of briefly accelerating the ship's wreckage downward toward the ground. As she slipped into unconsciousness, she instinctively wrapped herself in a protective purple embrace.

* * *

 _The news of the destruction of the Alliance prowler Normandy by unknown alien forces sends shockwaves throughout the galaxy. The Citadel braces itself in anticipation of the inevitable Alliance retaliation._

 _Captain Shepard's body is recovered from the crashed wreckage following the arrival of Fifth Fleet search and rescue forces. Amazingly, she is still alive, but comatose in a similar way to General Summers following the Temple Ship's destruction._

 _Upon Spectre Vakarian's debrief, the STG sends its most capable operatives and analysts to the system hoping to discover how the unknowns countered the Alliance's vaunted Wormhole Drive._

* * *

Miranda Lawson cast one final apprehensive look at the unresponsive woman on the table. After six months of time during which they had collaborated their efforts to ease her out of this state and give her the next generation of Jaeger augmentations, it was time for the final phase.

She wasn't too keen on her part in this as both technician and security. While yes, she was theoretically just as combat capable as the unconscious commando, she wasn't nearly as practiced in hand-to-hand. This would be, she ruefully admitted, a true test of her _perfection_.

"Ma'am," a technician called. "we're all set."

"Start stimulation."

Mechanical armatures hovered over the woman as they began remotely administering low-level deep-penetrating electrical currents. Shepard began to twitch on the table as the computer-controlled pulses stimulated her brain. Her eyelids opened partway, revealing her eyes to be rolled up.

"Neural response rising," a female technician announced. "Approaching conscious levels."

"Apply restraints," Miranda ordered.

The room filled with a blue tint as the emitter above the table applied an invisible force wave on the woman. Unfortunately, the commando's rising consciousness did not take this very well.

"Psionic activity detected!" the second technician yelled as Shepard's body began to glow purple.

 _Of course it's too much to expect this to be simple,_ Miranda groaned internally as she prepared her own psionics.

"Rising feedback on the restraints!" another man warned as Shepard's purple aura inexorably rose toward the emitter above. Her eyes now stared straight upward, but were strangely unfocused.

"Internal damage! Restraint failure!"

"Shut it off!" Miranda hollered as Shepard lunged off the table. "Shepard, it's me! Miranda!" she screamed as she parried a flurry of blows that would have killed any weaker human. "Wake up! You're safe! Stop it Erin!"

Shepard's eyes snapped into focus at the sound of her name. She stopped, slowly blinking away the residual nightmare she'd been trapped in and noticed the other woman desperately leaning back, keeping her neck away from her hand. "…where…I was…"

The psionic power that had allowed her to fight dissipated, along with the strength in her long-unused muscles. Miranda awkwardly caught her as she fell against the other woman, her consciousness fading away into a normal sleep.

Through an observation window, General Summers turned to Doctor Vahlen with a slight smile. "Please tell me I wasn't that pathetic when I woke up."

 _Codex: Psionics (Reveal)_

 _Within the Alliance, the reveal of Psionics changed very little of people's daily lives. A well-crafted public relations campaign by the Alliance government assuages any initial fears of psionic individuals, particularly with the revelation that General Summers and many others serving the Alliance possess them, and that the Alliance has been aware of them for decades._

 _The one major exception is crime rates. Militia members, who serve as law enforcement for their respective colonies, have by association received a reputation of being all-knowing and impossible to evade. As a result of this, the product of the Alliance policy of Criminal Management and the reveal of Psionics, crime rates across the Alliance have dropped to lows never before seen in history._

 _On the Citadel, the human C-Sec officers who didn't resign and retreat back to the Alliance enjoy a similarly intimidating image. Many are the gullible low-lifes who quickly buckle when a turian or asari officer brings along a human partner to "sweat" them._

 _During the establishment of the Alliance Embassy Garrison, Executor Pallin and Major Bailey created an agreement of support where C-Sec would request aid in the event of serious trouble. Somewhat to the major's annoyance, this support is frequently requested for extra security and intimidation, not the least because of the few psionic marines present in the garrison._

 _Codex: Criminal Management_

 _Like most civilizations, the Alliance deals quite harshly with crime. However, the Alliance has grudgingly recognized that completely eliminating crime is both impossible and undesirable. In recognition of this fact, the Alliance settles for managing crime._

 _Certain militia officers "run" criminal enterprises under the blessing of Alliance Intelligence. The purpose is to ensure that only "approved" criminals go big. The most successful black market dealers, forgers and thieves are either informants or undercover Intelligence personnel. Freelancers cannot assure the same quality of service, as they do not have the same resources the government does, and are often bypassed. Those who still acquire customers are quickly sniffed out and dealt with. This policy can be best described as "baiting and trapping."_

 _Informants are small-timers who, in exchange for relative immunity (barring the occasional incarceration and movement to another area), pass along information on newcomers and underground rumors of various crimes. They are also advised of the zero-tolerance policy during wartime, as the Alliance is not inclined to waste time and resources on crime at that point. Some informants are, unknown to their militia handlers, Alliance Intelligence, who serve to double-check the militia members themselves for corruption. This Byzantine arrangement ensures that criminal "managers" stay on the straight and narrow._

 _This policy has reduced crime substantially from the days before the Ethereal War. It also serves to give the public a cover excuse for having law enforcement. With no crime, there would be no reason to have it._

 **No Lazarus Project. No "we can rebuild her." She's a psionic supersoldier, and there is precedent.**

 **What was Garrus about to tell her? What did he mean when he asked if she or the Alliance knew?**

 **And so someone (and we know who) figures out how to counter one of the Alliance's greatest advantages.**

 **I'm almost done outlining how the rest of the story will go. I would also like to reiterate my warning that there will be substantial character death. For one character in particular, I expect roughly half of you will hate my guts for killing them off.**

 **But I'm an evil motherfucker, so I revel in that.**

 **Edit: I forgot to italicize General Summer's dialogue since he was holoconferencing.**


	26. Back to Work

**A sneak peek at some impending weapons upgrades from the Alliance, and a few familiar characters return.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Twenty Four

 **The Olympus, CNO Office**

Fleet Admiral Hackett looked up from his desk as Captain Shepard and Miranda Lawson tentatively walked through the door. "At ease, Shepard."

"Congratulations on the promotion, sir," she nodded toward the five stars on his collar.

"Funny, I've wondered whether it's really something to be happy about considering we're preparing for war," the aged admiral answered as he held up two folders. "We're just waiting for one more person to make it here, and then we'll start the briefing."

"Director Harper sends his regards," Miranda said off-handedly as she accepted her folder and opened to the first page, missing the fleeting dark expression on his face.

"Kind of him," he managed.

"You know," Shepard looked up with a slight smirk. "I bet mom went nuts when she heard about this."

"She insisted on accompanying the recovery teams," Hackett replied. "And I know better than to stand in her way by now, even if I rank her twice over."

Shepard stopped, her mental processes going in a new direction. "She's a Vice-Admiral now?"

"Under Admiral Mikhailovich. He took over the Fifth Fleet when General Summers promoted me to Chief Naval Officer."

The red-head grinned impishly. "She won't be as happy serving under him as she was serving under you, sir."

The admiral shook his head as the corners of his mouth curled upward. "Have you no shame, Erin?"

"What? Everyone knows the rumors about you and her."

"She's the one who started those rumors in the first place."

"And you've never said anything about them. Almost makes me wonder if you're my dad."

Before the admiral could reply, the door slid open again. "Sorry for my lateness, Admiral," a woman with a mixed French-Germanic accent apologized.

"I'm just glad you could join us, Dr. Vahlen," Hackett answered as he stood up to greet her. He noticed another man enter behind her. "I don't believe we've met, mister…"

"Dr. Richard Tygan," the dark-skinned man announced as he held out a hand. "Cydonia Research Institute. I've been consulting with the Alliance on some of Cerberus's latest projects."

"I felt that both of us should be here in order to explain our findings," Vahlen replied to the unspoken question in Hackett's eyes. "He holds a top-secret clearance."

Hacket held his gaze for a moment, before letting it drop. "Alright then, let's start. We all know that Captain Shepard was sent off on a scouting mission of the Terminus Systems to investigate the latest attacks on independent human colonies. And how the Normandy was ambushed and destroyed by an unknown alien force."

"Point of clarification," Tygan cut in. "The Normandy was actually destroyed from the shock of atmospheric deceleration after jumping from deep space into atmosphere."

"Joker-sorry, Flight Officer Moreau didn't exactly have that many options," Shepard justified.

"Considering how well that ambush was planned, it's almost a miracle you got out at all, Captain."

"Based on sensor data from the Normandy and our conceptual reverse engineering efforts, we believe the aliens had a device that used Dark Energy to counter our jump drive technology," Vahlen explained. "The device was Element Zero-based and capable of tremendous power. We're fortunate that it was not in the form of a tractor beam, as the Normandy would have had no escape."

"I thought that Element Zero couldn't affect our drives," Shepard noted.

"Dark energy affects space-time, Shepard," Miranda answered. "I'm guessing that the alien device used its expansionary effects to destabilize space-time in a certain area, preventing the Normandy from jumping away by closing off or shrinking any wormholes the ship opened up in its field of operation."

"Correct, Miss Lawson," Tygan agreed while Vahlen eyed the woman in equal parts astonishment and approval. "Our own constructed prototype operates in the same way, as shown by various tests conducted in collaboration with the Cydonians. If our efforts are accurate, that device is just a very simple yet powerful unshielded Element Zero generator, one that creates a potent area-denial effect in space. Theoretically, the device could be upscaled to severely disrupt or damage an enemy fleet. And with what we know of large scale Element Zero generators, it could be detonated as a last resort."

"One major concern about this is where the unknowns obtained such a large amount of Element Zero," Vahlen added. "This is more than any known independent party could easily obtain, and the technical knowledge to safely work with such vast quantities is not readily available to most people."

"If it's the Reapers or a group acting on their behalf, it would answer both questions," Miranda replied. "The Reapers built the Relays and the Citadel, according to that Prothean VI."

"How do we counter it?" Shepard asked.

"In the first place, get out of range. Failing that, you do have the option to destroy the device and immediately jump away to escape the blast. I would recommend against that however," Tygan said dryly. "We are currently working to design a drive system capable of 'brute forcing' its way through the Dark Energy field, but it will be some time before that makes its way into production."

"There is a project under way with Antares Munitions to create a weapon that can render active Element Zero inert," Vahlen recalled. "However, that project is still in the conceptual stage."

"Is that even possible?" Shepard asked incredulously.

"Theoretically, that kind of weapon would involve a 'Dark-Energy sink' that would safely drain off the energy from the core," Tygan mused, "or it would simply disrupt the electrical systems passing current through the core material. The latter, of course, is more practical. In simple terms, I'd think the best weapon against this alien device would be an EMP burst. The induced charge in the device would likely cause a short in the controls or mechanisms, tripping a safety system and causing it to shut down or partially self-destruct."

"We do still have our old designs for the EMP cannons from the war," Vahlen continued, slowly becoming more excited. "We can reengineer those into a long ranged weapon for a ship that can fry the cores through electrical induction! With the introduction of a plasma stream to carry the charge, we can convert it into an electrolaser! An entirely new weapon system!"

"And this is how scientific breakthroughs are made…" Hackett noted sardonically as Vahlen began furiously typing on her tablet muttering under her breath.

"Scientific progress isn't always as methodical as we'd like," Tygan agreed. "Sometimes, you just need a 'eureka' moment."

Miranda cleared her throat. "While this is interesting and all, we still have a briefing to get through, admiral."

"Yes, getting back to the mission, the Alliance is still trying to determine who is behind the attacks," Hackett grimaced. "Fortunately, there have only been two such incidents after the destruction of the Normandy. However, those were within the last month. We need to move in fast and neutralize the unknowns. To that end, we're sending both of you two out there. Shepard, I'm assigning you a new generation frigate. It has roughly the same speed as the Normandy, but a lot more armor and firepower."

"And probably a lot more surface area and personnel to defend," Shepard pointed out.

"Actually no on the second part," the admiral corrected her. "You'll see what I mean when you take the tour of the ship."

"I presume I'll be using a different means of transport?" Miranda asked. "Cerberus has a number of undercover units we use."

"For reasons of his own, Director Harper has seconded you to me for the investigation," Hacket replied. "but he did provide one of those undercover transports you are referring to. To make things clear, both of you report directly to me until further notice."

"Understood," both women acknowledged.

"The director has been keeping tabs on the Spectre you interacted with, Erin. Apparently he's currently at a large space station known as Omega. In the interest of public cooperation, you should meet up with him and see if he's uncovered anything in the last six months."

"Will do sir," Shepard noted.

"Miss Lawson, you will be heading off to the planet Illium to make contact with Dr. T'Soni. It's my understanding that she's been scouring everything related to the Protheans for anything they had on the Reapers. Find out what she's discovered, and keep an ear out for anything of interest."

"Understood," Miranda replied, mentally going over the list of undercover agents Cerberus had in that part of the galaxy.

 **Sorensis**

The salarian agent looked up at the telltale static from the bug in place. His turian partner set down his rifle and cleaning kit and joined him to listen in.

"What do you think he'll ramble on about today?" the turian grumbled as the familiar voice of a batarian demagogue began streaming over the speaker.

"More 'human treachery,' no doubt," his colleague replied. "It's not as if he has any new material to work with."

 _"This is Shadow Two,"_ their asari partner called over the radio. _"I'm overlooking the area. Got a bunch of new faces in the group. I recognize a few of them from the Blue Suns."_

"Shadow Two, patch in the visual," the salarian ordered.

A small holodisplay flickered to life, giving image to the madness of the raving.

"Running facial recognition software," the salarian announced to the others. "I see Helak Vresta down there."

 _"Please tell me I'll get to shoot that bastard when we get the order,"_ the asari hissed as the feed moved back over to focus on the man in question. She had a bone to pick with that notorious slaving scum after spending a decade under his "tender ministrations."

"Why make it quick and fast?" the turian asked. "If you want, I can show you how to really draw out his last moments." The Cabal veteran fingered a wickedly serrated blade along his thigh.

"Keep it professional you two," the STG agent warned.

 _"The humans brought ruin to our worlds!"_ the demagogue howled as the throng of disgruntled mercenaries and soldiers listened, eagerly devouring his words. _"Our proud people became refugees...and yet…they could not shatter…OUR UNITY!"_ The crowd roared its approval, with many hefting weapons into the air. _"For we are bound by the Khala, our oath of vengeance! We carry with us the last hope of the Hegemony! And we will restore it to greatness! But first, we must destroy the humans as they attempted to destroy us! And we will succeed!"_

"How delusional can you get?" the turian asked as a renewed chorus of screams echoed over the line. "These rebels actually think they have a chance against the Alliance?"

"Hate has a tendency to distance desire from reality," the salarian answered dryly.

 _"I'm going to enjoy carving your eyes out you four-eyed son of a bitch,"_ the asari whispered over the radio. _"and then I'll take a meat grinder to your legs, and a plasma torch to your hands, and a fucking thumbscrew to your tiny little…"_

"Case in point," the salarian sighed before keying his mic. "Shadow Two, you know we can hear you, right?"

 **The Olympus, Docks**

"How long did it take for them to switch the mechanical docking arms out for the tractor beams?" Shepard asked as they made their way to her new ship.

"About a year," Hackett replied.

"That fast?!" Shepard whipped her eyes across the vast docking area, trying and failing to count all the armatures.

"When we established the joint-training facilities for the Cydonians and the Mutons, they pitched in a lot around here. Their help made things go much faster."

"So I see," Shepard trailed off seeing two human engineers coordinating with a Muton technician in fussing over a section of a destroyer.

"Captain!" a familiar voice drew her attention back over. She turned her head to see Commander Pressly waving her over. "Welcome back, ma'am."

"Good to see you survived," she greeted as she squeezed his hand. To his credit, Pressly didn't show any sign of pain from her grip.

"Thanks to you, ma'am," he reminded her as he withdrew his hand, flexing his fingers to regain circulation.

"Hello, Captain Shepard," a new and distinctly artificial voice chimed in.

"Shepard, may I present EDI, the first Human-Cydonian hybrid AI," Hackett swept his arm toward the gynoid walking toward them.

"I am actually purely Cydonian, admiral," EDI corrected him. "This body is human-made."

"Looks like it was made for combat," Shepard noted, eyeing the armored frame and limbs.

"Correct, Captain. I will be taking this body into combat if called for. And you may be surprised what it is capable of," To accentuate her words, EDI's chassis began glowing a subdued blue.

"Biotics," Shepard noted. "just like that one geth five years ago."

"Yes. These are the same as the combat prosthetics designed for augmenting humans as part of the MEC Soldier program," EDI flexed the limbs in question. "Anyone with these will be able to use biotic abilities."

"Alright, but you said this is for combat if called for. Are you also going to be managing the ship?"

"That's exactly right, Shepard," Hackett answered. "She is the reason that this ship won't require the same amount of personnel."

"Great."

"To be more precise, I will be handling much of the ship's combat and electronic functions," EDI clarified. "There is still a team of engineers to maintain the ship core separately from myself, though they can allow me access if need be. There is also the matter of the ship's pilot who has refused to allow me to aid him." Amusingly, this came out with a slight hint of vexation.

"Flight Officer Moreau is somewhat possessive of, quote on quote, 'his place,'" Pressly explained.

"That sounds like Joker alright," Shepard laughed.

"Ah, there you are, Shepard!" a familiar voice echoed through the docks behind them.

"Captain Anderson!"

"I hope you'll enjoy the new ship, and that you bring it back in better shape than the last one we gave you," he leered.

"With all due respect sir, go to hell," Shepard swatted his arm lightly. "And I'm surprised you haven't been promoted to admiral yet."

"That's because he refused to be," Hackett noted with a smirk. "despite my best efforts."

"I'm not old enough yet to be trapped behind a desk, dammit," Anderson said.

"And I am?"

"You're the crusty old bastard that everyone kisses up to. I'm the guy who makes sure that everyone kisses up to you."

"Everyone except you, apparently."

"Someone has to keep you in line, sir."

Hackett shook his head. "Well Shepard, this is what you have to work with. She's all yours, and as her first captain and first in her class, you get to name her."

Shepard froze. "Really, sir?"

"Really, Shepard," Anderson confirmed.

The woman thought back to her previous command, remembering her time with it and her current mission. Then she smiled as she considered how fitting it would be. "Why mess with what works? We'll just call her the Normandy."

"I figured as much," Hackett smiled, gesturing to a section of hull plate. Shepard followed his arm to see "Normandy" clearly etched and painted on the side. "I don't need psionics to read your mind, Erin."

Shepard's mouth twisted into a lopsided smirk. "And what would have happened if I picked a different name?"

"We had an extra section of hull plate on hand that we could have quickly etched and painted."

"Ma'am, we have a few hours before we can get underway," Pressly noted. "Shall I give you the tour?"

 **Sorensis**

 _"Goddess, this guy won't shut up!"_ Shadow Two growled. _"How can anyone stretch out 'kill the humans' into a two hour speech?"_

"You have to admit, that takes some imagination," the turian replied.

 _"Well I'm imagining pitting one into that lump of skin he calls a face so I don't have to listen to this garbage anymore."_

"Remember our mission," the salarian reminded them. "We observe and report. And if this group of rebels laughingly known as the 'Hegemony Band of Brothers' actually tries to strike out against the humans, we string them out to see how far they could get, and then we kill them."

 _"Our preparations will soon be complete!"_ the demagogue raved. _"The Leviathan of Dis lives!"_

The STG commando lurched forward, almost shoving his colleague out of the way as he cranked the volume all the way up. _Did he just say…_

 _"Those cowards on the Citadel felt the wrath of its brother, and we shall make the humans fear the Leviathan! With this ancient god, we shall smite the humans!"_

"The Leviathan of Dis," the turian repeated slowly.

 _"Isn't that the wrecked alien dreadnought the Hegemony discovered?"_ Shadow Two remembered.

"Yes," the salarian confirmed. "and we've been wondering where it went. If what he's saying is true, these rebels managed to make that thing operational."

 _"How?! None of these guys are the brightest bulbs in the box!"_

 _"Spread the word! The time of our reckoning is at hand, and we shall collect what is owed us! The humans will pay in blood!"_

The salarian was fumbling with his omnitool, preparing to send out a critical alert to his superiors when the roar of the crowd abruptly died away and an unfamiliar voice came over the line.

 _"Alright then, we'll start with yours."_

* * *

Before the eyes of the crowd and an astonished asari commando, a spear of blood erupted from the batarian speaker's chest and a human materialized directly behind him. The scum's voice had been grating on his ears for some time, and he took satisfaction in silencing the alien rebel.

Kai Leng carelessly pulled the blade out of the man, the first victim in the impending bloodbath, and swept the blood off the blade. He spat on the man's body. "Hmph, disgusting freak."

"HUMAN!" Several batarians roared as they pulled out their weapons. But the human was already among them, his blade flashing so fast it seemed to be a fireworks display. Blood flew through the air as a number of hapless rebels were hacked apart before any of them could pull a trigger.

Leng cast his eyes toward the back of the crowd, where despite their prior bravado, panic was setting in. A small group of the alien scum was heading for the exit. And then they froze before turning around, a visible purple glow in their eyes. Leng smirked as the rebels drew their weapons. Right on time.

The asari stared, speechless, as the previously fleeing batarians opened fire on their own. She remembered her briefing as she saw that purple glow and swiftly made the connection. "Alliance…" she breathed, a shiver of fear running down her spine.

By now, the entire crowd was fighting back, or attempting to. The group of traitors was cut down by a retaliatory fusillade after a few seconds. But for each renegade cut down, another seemed to crop up, bearing that same purple glow. Meanwhile, Kai Leng continued his effortless massacre, his body almost on autopilot as he, with only the slightest curl of contempt on his otherwise impassive mien. Nothing changed it. Not the heat from a point-blank shotgun blast singing his hair. Not the grenade that he batted away to explode harmlessly several meters up. Not the hairline cut that a very lucky (or unlucky) batarian managed to score on his armor with a rusty combat knife. Once upon a time, this chaos might have excited him, but after years of dealing with subhuman alien scum like this and never once finding his life in any real danger, the excitement had long waned. His blood bayed for something greater, and he craved a better fight.

The "battle" lasted ten minutes, though for the few survivors it seemed an eternity of slaughter. The gunfire had long since died off, and now the only sounds were of armored feet on the slick blood-soaked ground and the last gasps of the dying.

Leng made his way over to a downed alien and kicked the man onto his back. The coward had thought to play dead, he noted with contempt. A second human approached, mind-controlled thralls in tow. The swordsman hauled the alien to his knees and leveled his blade at his throat. "That was a very interesting speech your friend was giving," he said sarcastically. "He mentioned a Leviathan. Care to tell us what it is?"

The frightened man didn't hear the question. His sheer terror of these two…monsters blotted it out. Unknown even to him, the only thing he could whimper was "please don't kill me" over and over again.

"Don't want to talk?" Leng mused. "Well let me tell you something," he bent over and whispered in his face. "You can talk of your own free will, or I hand you over to my 'friend' here. Your choice, scum. And I'm the nice one here."

Kaiden Alenko kept his disgust toward his fellow Jaeger hidden, knowing better than to express it on the mission.

* * *

"Spirits above…" the cabal veteran breathed, his mind replaying the video of the slaughter. In all his years, he'd never seen such a brutal butchering.

Meanwhile, the salarian was frantically exchanging words with his superior. "The Alliance knows about the Leviathan."

* * *

The demagogue, inexplicably, was still alive. He had watched, powerless, as his band of brothers was mercilessly killed. "No…" he gurgled, his eyesight fading away as internal bleeding took its toll. "…we were…supposed…to…"

With all eyes elsewhere and the stench of blood and body fluids covering the ground, no one noticed the faint green tinge in his eyes or the rank odor of spores emanating from his corpse.

 _Codex: Alliance Government Structure_

 _On paper, the Alliance is comprised of two worlds: civil, and military._

 _The civil government consists of municipal authorities, colonial governors and staff, Alliance departments, and the Joint Council. Each city or country on any world represents itself in the colonial or planetary government, and each government has a representative on the Council. To serve as a representative, or department head, a candidate must have collegiate level education in a relevant field of study. Most planetary representatives have degrees in business management, the better to deal with the various concerns of running a colony._

 _Laws are typically made at the local municipal level. All other levels usually only pass "measures," and "austerity measures," which are seen as strong suggestions. This is in acknowledgement of vastly differing local conditions and colonial culture. A one-size-fits-all approach to law would not be feasible, the criminal code notwithstanding. To avoid separationist concerns, each "austerity measure" comes with the unspoken threat of withdrawing military protection, leaving the colony with only sub-par militia to defend them. This scheme has the side benefit of curbing corruption that originates from international corporations, as the vast number of municipal officials in the Alliance would place a strain on even the richest of companies that try bribery to obtain exceptions from the law._

 _The civil government has the responsibility of managing revenue flow and colonial development. In simple terms, they are the source of the money._

 _The military is governed by a universal set of laws that hold members to a strict level of conduct, and is overseen by the Joint Chiefs, the senior general and flag officers of both the militia and the regular military._

 _The militia officers are more of representatives, having little real say in the operations of the militia. Their primary purpose is to keep the militia commanders informed of military developments and to coordinate training and exercises._

 _The military is the single largest source of employment in the Alliance, responsible for roughly 15-18% of all jobs either through direct employment or contracts. A prime example is the Alliance Travel System.  
_

 _While General Marcus Summers is the "leader" of the military, his authority is not absolute. The Joint Council normally allows the military free reign, but has the final mandate over the military by the simple virtue of supplying the funding, recruits and raw materials needed to operate._

 _Alliance Intelligence occupies an odd place in the government structure. Neither wholly civilian or military, its unwritten purpose is to ensure a happy marriage between the two while overseeing intercolonial legal affairs. Its responsibilities are broad, encompassing civil unrest, corporate espionage, sedition, the criminal justice system and crisis management just to name a few._

 _Ideally, the civil government has the greatest amount of power during times of peace, handing over power to the military in the face of impending war or conflict. In reality, the relationship is considerably more complex._

 _Codex: Normandy-Class Frigate_

 _With the integration of Cydonian AI technology, Alliance has seen fit to produce a new breed of warship with remote combat capability. The ship carries two Firebird drones, which are piloted by the ship AI and serve as extra gun platforms and sensors. It also carries a large supply of reconnaissance drones, each with its own wormhole drive, to scout ahead on a jump or blanket a battlefield with extra eyes._

 _With the lessons taken from previous combat experiences, the Alliance has redesigned the weapons banks with an eye towards increased modularity, allowing for rapid inclusion of weapon upgrades as research progresses._

 _A more modern core design and more robust engines allow the Normandy-Class the same agility and speed as the ill-fated prowler from which it draws its namesake, while a set of permanent shield capacitors enables the shield systems to always be ready, to avoid the the fate of its predecessor._

 **Hmm, there was something strange about that batarian. What could it be?  
**

 **The Normandy prowler did not have time to energize its shields during the attack, hence why the ambush was successful. However, the Alliance, like the geth, adapts very quickly. Fool me once...**

 **Side note: I'm learning/remembering a lot of things about laser physics thanks to those who take the time to review. I admit, I forgot that in space, there is insufficient matter for lasers to reflect off of in order to produce the visual effects I describe in story. I'm on the fence as to whether or not I should go back and re-edit those scenes to make them consistent with physics, or leave it as is to enable the readers to more easily imagine the effects.**

 **In my defense, my background is mechanical/aerospace engineering and computer science rather than optics and high energy physics.**

 **Say hello to everyone's favorite bisexual officer!**

 **A lot of stories under the ME section have Hackett as Shepard's father or some other familial relation. What do you think? I'm leaving it up to you readers.**

 **DrKerbin: you are correct. Focusing light does require a physical medium. I envisioned "magnetic lensing" as being like Gundam Seed's Geschmedig Panzer system, using magnetic fields to manipulate particles to reflect or refract energy beams. Obviously, this is beyond current technology, and who knows if it's even possible. But that's where I got the idea.**


	27. Seemed like a Good Idea at the Time

**Expositions galore! Cookies to those who recognize the shout-out directly below.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Twenty Five

 **The Normandy**

"And here is the internal hangar," Pressly finished, gesturing to the large bay with three separate craft inside. "The maintenance staff live here when they're not working on the machines or helping out the engineers with the ship systems. You can also see we have a more diverse crew than before, now that integration of our allied forces is underway."

"So I see," Shepard cast her eyes over the motley crew of technicians, including a number of Sectoids scampering around inside of one of the Firebird drones under the direction of a Cydonian disc. A muton with both an oxygen tank on his shoulder and clipboard in the other hand was nodding as a woman in a flight suit chattered with him.

"Tench-hut!" the floor chief barked. Every human snapped to attention and faced the two officers.

"As you were," Shepard called. "I hope your people have what you need, chief."

"If anything, we might have too much, ma'am, as impossible as that may be," the chief replied.

"Ma'am," the female officer made her way over and shook hands. Shepard took care not to mash her delicate fingers. "Lieutenant Colonel Kei Nagase. I'm your new taxi driver."

"What happened to Major Kearing?" the red-head asked, remembering the man who'd gotten her team through airborne hell five years ago.

"He made light bird. He's at Eridanus Flight School, showing the nuggets defensive flying techniques for the geth." Nagase paused awkwardly. "Captain Valeri didn't make it. His escape pod malfunctioned and dropped him and the others onto a goddamned rock garden. The impact blew the seals. They didn't even have time to freeze to death."

"I'll have to knock back a drink to the guy sometime," Shepard noted, feeling a sting of internal anguish from losing some of her command. "Who's your copilot?"

"Lieutenant Colonel Alvin Davenport. He was in my class, can't really keep his hands to himself. Sometimes I need to slap some sense into him," Nagase explained with a sheepish grin. "I can't knock his flying though. He's probably better than me at getting the _Arkbird_ where it needs to go."

"I bet he's got great hands," Shepard quipped, earning a slight blush from the pilot. "Well knowing my luck, you'll probably see some action when you're taking us down to land."

"Great," the chief commented. "Now I know exactly who to pin the blame on when you bring my baby back with more than a scuff on the front bumper." He thumped a torque wrench into his meaty palm for emphasis.

"Hopefully it won't come to that," Shepard laughed. "Carry on, chief."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

Once they were inside the elevator, Shepard eyeballed her XO. "How many people did we lose?" she asked in a subdued voice.

"There were ten people in that pod," Pressly answered, "including Chief Engineer Adams. I did the letter writing, ma'am."

Shepard clenched her jaw and tightened her fist. She sucked in a breath through her nose before letting it out slowly. "We're going to find out who did this," she hissed, more to herself than anything as her eyes momentarily pulsed purple, "and then we're gonna skullfuck them."

 **The Citadel, Presidium**

Tevos stared at the screen, once again terrified at what she'd seen. It was becoming a common occurrence with anything involving the Alliance.

"We'd long suspected that the Alliance had more individuals just as capable as Captain Erin Shepard," Valern noted dryly. "This is just confirmation of that fact."

"Did I see that right?" Sparatus demanded. "Some of those batarian rebels were attacking their comrades."

"Indeed," the salarian replied. "It would appear that either one or both of the human agents possesses the ability to mind control enemies. I am inclined to believe that Commander Alenko was responsible for that display."

"You said that the STG had a team observing these batarians. What for?" Tevos asked.

"In recent months, we'd heard rumors of the resurging Hegemony Remnant coalescing around an influential and public figure: High Priest Jath'Amon. With what is known about the Remnant, we believed they were planning to assault the Alliance. Our agents were observing them to determine what their plans were and potentially locate the true bulk of their force. Evidently, they are forming a force based around the Leviathan of Dis. Also, we were attempting to use them to gauge the depth of the Alliance's intelligence resources. Jath'Amon went to great lengths to conceal his recruiting efforts. We only heard about it from an informant. It was reasonable to assume, based on the difficulty of infiltrating the Remnant, that the Alliance might not have heard of it at the time. Therefore, by monitoring how far word spread and seeing when the inevitable response would fall, we could see where the current state of Alliance Intelligence in the area was."

"Evidently that didn't pan out," Sparatus commented sardonically, "considering how often you used the word 'was.'"

"The current situation is very much undesirable," Valern admitted. "The Alliance knows about the Leviathan of Dis, and it is now a race to see who can get there first. If the Alliance does, there is a great likelihood that they will destroy it before we can obtain anything of value from it. According to the record, the Leviathan is most likely a dead and intact Reaper similar to Sovereign. Insofar as we know, Reaper technology is one of the few things available that might allow us technological parity with the Alliance. I say 'might,' because the Alliance most certainly has not remained idle these past years."

"Do you think the Alliance also knew about our surveillance?" Tevos ventured.

"We'll know if Ambassador Udina shows up to talk about this incident."

"So right now, we have three confirmed Alliance supersoldiers. Two of them, we have names for, and more confirmation of Psionic power. The Alliance knows about a technological treasure trove that we could use to bring ourselves up to their level and is probably moving to destroy it. And this all came from a potential diplomatic incident because we were stringing out the Remnant to see how soon the Alliance would react or if they would succeed. And the Alliance might even know about that part. Do I have that right?" Sparatus summarized.

"Correct, in essentials."

"Wonderful," the turian grumbled. "Why is it that no matter what, we are always lagging behind them?"

"If any of us had the answer to that question, we wouldn't be."

 **Omega, Entry Checkpoint**

The batarian at the docks did a double take upon seeing the shock of red hair before frantically sending a message from his omnitool. When the reply came back twenty seconds later, he cursed before resigning himself to the task. "Captain Shepard," he said, walking up to the duo. "Aria wants to see you."

The red-head fixed him with an intimidating gaze as the woman behind her looked on in curiosity. "What for?"

"I'm just relaying the message," the batarian replied, holding up his hands in a helpless gesture.

"Alright, I'll play along," the woman growled, to his relief.

"Knowing your history, she probably just wants to ascertain your intentions here," EDI guessed as they walked off, wearing a holographic disguise over her frame.

"Yeah, I guess," Shepard grumbled. "But it's still a bit of a delay."

"We don't know exactly where Spectre Vakarian is on this station. Perhaps Aria will know that," EDI pointed out.

They passed several groups of people, many surprisingly upbeat for a place that Shepard had been briefed to be the hub of criminal activity in the Terminus systems.

"-so I thought I was shit outta luck. The dealer has a shotgun on my girl and his buddy was about to knife me, and then they both just drop dead! We got the hell outta there! I swear I'm staying away from that place from now on!"

"It's like you had an angel watching over you, right Jas?"

"Hah! Yep, a Guardian Angel!"

"-can't believe it. The Blood Pack are finally gone from our neighborhood!"

"You know the Guardians raided a bunch of their warehouses and torched the lot. That's why they pulled out."

"Works for me! I don't have to worry about some vorcha trying to rip my face off because I took a wrong turn anymore."

"I wonder what they're talking about," Shepard mused as they walked into the nightclub.

Aria T'Loak was watching them expectantly as they made their way over to her private lounge. "Well if it isn't the Butcher herself," she called. "Mind if I say that I'm a fan of your brand of violence?"

"They had it coming," Erin answered dismissively.

Aria's mouth twisted into a smirk. "Everyone has it coming, hon. Just a matter of finding out what makes it come."

Shepard kept her mouth shut, refusing to play the game.

"Alright, be that way," Aria pouted. "So what is the Alliance's most dangerous woman doing here on my station?"

"I'm just here to find Garrus Vakarian."

"The Spectre, huh?" Aria grinned. "Got the hots for him? He came here a while back and almost started a fight. Only backed down when I called up Councilor Tevos to tell him off. Pity. I think it would have been fun having a romp with one of the Council's bad boys."

"Do you know where he is?"

"You know all work and no play makes a girl dull, hon. He's around here somewhere. Him and his 'Guardian Angels,' as the little people call them."

"What's that about?"

"Oh just a bunch of goody-goodies protecting people from the gangs and taking them down slowly," Aria waved her hand dismissively. "Means I don't have to go around busting balls as much. I could care less as long as they obey the one rule around here."

"And what rule is that?" Shepard asked, with a slight smirk.

"Don't fuck with Aria," the asari replied, with another grin. "It's not a rule I have to enforce very often."

"I can imagine," the red-head noted dryly.

"If you want to find him, your best bet is the slum areas," Aria offered. "That's where the gangs he's been targeting usually are."

"Nice of you to tell me."

"As much as your violence turns me on, I'd prefer not to experience it, hon." Aria explained seriously. "At least, not the kind that you and your friends get up to on the battlefield."

"It looks like you have an admirer, Shepard." EDI spoke up with a holographic smile.

"That's a little disturbing," Erin muttered as she turned to leave.

"You're welcome, sweety," Aria called.

 **Omega, Unknown Location**

"Hey Garrus, got something you might want to see."

"Kinda busy with this piece of crap," a muffled voice answered with a clatter. "Give me a preview."

"The Bucher of Torfan."

There was a loud clang. "Ow! Shit!" Garrus appeared, rubbing his head.

"You know, there's these things called 'safety helmets,'" the other person pointed out with a chuckle.

"Laugh it up, Butler," the turian groaned.

"Just saying that next time you want to go under a rickety old transport to do some tinkering, you might want to wear PPE."

"Six firefights with explosions, shrapnel and machinegun fire, and the first thing that clobbers me in the head is an exhaust manifold," Garrus grumbled as he looked at the computer screen displaying a hacked camera feed. "Where is she?"

"She just left Afterlife, heading in our direction, actually."

"Who's closest?"

"Sidonis is making a supply run."

"Great. I'll have him bring her over."

 **Tartarus**

Director Harper closed the file and leaned back in his chair. "Your thoughts on the mission, doctor?"

"I'd say that it was a success, even if we're using the same method too often for my taste," Dr. Core replied. "There has to be a point where people realize that every big attempt by the Remnant to organize and strike back at us was started by us to draw them out so we could deal with them."

"Fortunately, that point has not yet materialized," Harper noted, taking a deep puff on his cigar. "Your people have made great strides with Project Thorian. It remains to be seen if it can immunize against Reaper indoctrination."

"We have a golden opportunity to test that with this Leviathan of Dis. Assuming that this thing is real," she cautioned.

"And assuming that a dead Reaper is capable of doing so."

"There is also that," Core admitted, as she scrolled through her private notes. "I wonder if we could use Project Thorian to not just remove prior indoctrination but overwrite it. The Thorian itself did something like that. If we can control it, we can capture and turn any indoctrinated slaves against them."

"You're thinking of developing Project Thorian into an area-denial weapon?" Harper mused.

"Our nanite weapons just rip living things apart. Project Thorian would let us turn enemy troops against themselves. If we combined our nanite weapons with this, just imagine what an advantage we would have in a ground conflict."

Harper thought for a moment. "For that to work, you would have to redesign or reprogram the nanites to attack personal protective gear and breach it enough for the spores to make contact, and then you would have to wait as they do their job. But from what we've seen when we were 'programming' Jath'Amon, it takes a number of days for the spores work. Perhaps if you could find a way to accelerate the process."

"I'll run that by my staff," the doctor promised, typing up the suggestion.

"On another note, how goes Benezia's recovery?"

"We've gotten some low level neurological responses, but nothing approaching an asari's normal brain activity. I want to try using the spores on her to reverse the brain damage that indoctrination inflicts. No telling what the side effects would be though."

"Hold off on that until you can figure out a way to remove the spores from a person," Harper ordered. "Bringing the matriarch back would be a public relations boost, but she absolutely must pass medical scrutiny to avoid a backlash of suspicion. Not to mention how Dr. T'Soni would react."

"What if we could hide the symptoms?"

The director shook his head. "The risk of alienating the asari is too great."

"Killjoy," Core pouted. _Damn, another opportunity wasted,_ she thought. Harper, old friend and respected colleague that he was, was beginning to look more like an obstacle to her plans. _Well, that will change in time,_ she consoled herself.

"I saw that Commander Alenko acquitted himself quite well on the mission."

"It's amazing how naturally strong his psionics are," the doctor breathed. "and his affinity for mind control."

"The same cannot be said for his psionic defenses yet," the director noted.

"Well he hasn't gone through the final set of augmentations and training," she justified.

"Then put him through it. Now that Shepard is back in the game, we can finish it off. After that, we'll send him back out to help search for the Leviathan."

"Right away, Jack."

 **Omega, Guardian hideout**

"Nice digs you have here," Shepard whistled appreciatively.

"It's not much, but it's a start," Garrus replied.

"I'm guessing the owners charged a stiff price," the red-head smirked.

"Well, at least we didn't have to bury the stiffs," a chirpy asari chimed in.

"They smelled something awful," a younger turian complained.

"And they didn't taste particularly great," a krogan growled as he walked past, drawing odd looks from the two.

"I hope that was a joke," the turian muttered.

"Don't mind him, Sidonis," Garrus commented. "Krul prefers live meat," he smirked wickedly as the younger two Guardians adopted disgusted expressions.

"You're one big happy family," Shepard commented.

"We've been working together for a couple months," Garrus shrugged. "Of course, Mierin and Sidonis joined up pretty late."

"So what made you start this group?"

The Spectre shrugged. "Originally, I was raiding these groups for information. Eclipse, Blue Suns, Blood Pack, they're the three big mercenary powers in the Terminus systems, with eyes and ears all over. You want something done, chances are you go to one of them. But then I saw what a wretched hive of scum and villainy this place was. I started drilling heads, and before you know it the other guys came along. Some appreciative people on Omega called us Guardian Angels, and the rest…" he trailed off.

"They call us Guardian Angels," Mierin corrected as she began to walk off, sensing that this talk would soon go somewhere way above her head. "They call _you_ the Archangel."

"Oh yeah, forgot about that," Garrus remembered as he watched the asari drag Sidonis away to her room. "Turns out that being a Spectre makes you a familiar face."

"Did you really just quote 'Star Wars?'" Shepard asked in amusement.

"Hey, what can I say? They're good movies."

"Where did you even see those movies?"

"Well it turns out that Alliance entertainment media fetches a high price on the black market here."

"You're kidding," Shepard deadpanned.

"Nope, dead serious," Garrus shook his head. "People in our society want to see your movies and books, and pay top credits for it. There's a big smuggling trade from Shanxi into the Terminus. I happened to run into one of those smugglers while I was looking for information. Since the only laws he's violating are export and tax laws, I let him off as long as he kept an ear out and gave me some of his inventory. At the time, he was shipping Star Wars movies."

"Why were you looking for information?" EDI asked, bringing the conversation back to business.

Garrus looked around furtively. "Not here," he murmured, gesturing for the two to follow him. The trio entered a small darkened room. After the door closed, a buzzing noise began to echo through the room. "Okay, so after the Citadel attack, I got called back to the Hierarchy where they asked me to help them with a program to develop anti-psionic soldiers."

"You sure you should be telling us this?" Shepard asked, a wry smile on her lips.

"They stuck me with cleaning up the mess after the whole thing went to hell," Garrus retorted. "Plus, they never should have run the program in the first place. Their plan was to augment soldiers with Reaper technology. Before you ask, yeah, I told them that was a shitty idea. They still went with it."

"What made them think it was a good idea to begin with?" Shepard demanded.

"You know how Ambassador Udina was hospitalized after the attack? Apparently, he had a bad reaction to Sovereign's arrival. They figured that if a Reaper can do that to a psionic, having hunter-killer troops with Reaper augments would be a counter to psionic soldiers."

"That's understandable," EDI noted. "I assume that after all the various ways your civilization has lagged behind the Alliance, your people were anxious to come up with something to counter human technology."

"Yeah," Garrus agreed. "Now they weren't stupid about the program," he explained. "Not in the least. Turns out the Salarian Union has a bunch of containment blacksites for dangerous projects that can easily be destroyed if something goes wrong. They ran the program out of one of those sites, and their project personnel never directly touched any of the test subjects or Reaper fragments. It ran for years without anything happening."

"What exactly did they do?" Shepard queried.

"Their plan was to augment condemned criminals as test subjects, keep them isolated in observation cells, observe how the augments adapted, dissect them, reverse engineer the implants without any Reaper influence, and use those for our soldiers." Garrus shrugged. "I can't give you the specifics, but I know someone who can if you want them. What happened was that the third generation of test subjects escaped containment, and got away before the project managers could close off the site."

"How did that happen?" EDI asked.

"This was when they were testing the second batch of reverse-engineered implants. They decided to see how it would benefit someone with soldier training and experience. They took a disgraced Hierarchy officer who volunteered for the project and put him in there. After two months, he led a breakout." Garrus's jaw tightened. "And I've been hunting them down ever since."

"So you're saying a bunch of indoctrinated killers and criminals are running around in the galaxy led by another rogue turian officer?" Shepard laughed mirthlessly. "Here we go again. Was this what you were going to tell me back on the Normandy?"

"Yeah," Garrus nodded. "Most of these guys aren't that much of a problem. It's the four heavy hitters I'm worried about. I have their files right here."

EDI and Shepard accepted the datapads and looked them over. "Garm of the Blood Pack?"

"A krogan freak of nature," Garrus explained. "He was a biotic with a powerful regeneration factor even before he was augmented. Now he's a walking tank that can laugh off artillery fire."

"Jona Sideris, founder of the Eclipse mercenary group," EDI read off.

"Originally, she was a Hegemony slave. She escaped way back when and made a name for herself killing slavers and pirates. Then she formed Eclipse before going off the deep end and becoming a serial killer." The Spectre shrugged. "Her biotics were matriarch-level, and she has centuries of experience as a commando. Funny thing about her though is that the psychiatrists who profiled her say she never got over her time as a slave. According to some of the original Eclipse gang that we have locked up, they say she was a tyrant who ran things by fear."

"So what's she like now?" Shepard asked, rhetorically. "Even worse?"

"The third generation of test subjects wasn't originally locked away like the first set. They thought it was too cruel. Then Jona started killing them."

"Nice girl," Erin quipped. "Taniks the Scarred…"

"Now he's an interesting guy," Garrus rubbed his chin. "He was one of the more docile subjects. I even got to chat with him through a remote line. He's former Hegemony Military, a murderer and very good at what he does. He used to do jobs for various internal officials as part of politics, taking out rivals and such. One day, they all decided that he knew too much. So they tried to have him killed. That's where he got the scar on his face. He's blind in the upper left eye. Hasn't slowed him down one bit."

"Sounds like someone I know," Shepard mused, thinking back to the crusty old warrant officer who trained her.

"He left the Hegemony and went around as a free agent. Then he joined the Blue Suns. He got taken down by another Spectre."

"So what can he do?"

Garrus whistled. "He's one of the best snipers in the galaxy. Better than me," he admitted. "Way better. Some genius thought about giving him one of our newly developed sonic rifles and letting him try it out, since he was better behaved than the other subjects. Now he's run off with it. He's a highly trained assassin with a silent rifle. Just what the galaxy needs."

"Sonic rifles are passively countered by armor," EDI noted. "I understand that the Alliance worked on sonic beam rifles a long time ago, but deemed them impractical for battlefield use."

"Won't stop this guy," Garrus countered. "Trust me, he's physically the most dangerous of the four."

"And who's the fourth?" Shepard asked.

"Commander Vyrnnus, formerly Captain before he got demoted. He was a veteran of Shanxi, and he's a strong biotic. Strong enough to beat the shit out of Jona Sideris and make her stop killing the other test subjects. He's the only person she's afraid of."

"Wow."

"He also has a bad temper. It was bad enough to get him demoted. Now, with the Reaper tech messing with his mind, it's even worse."

"So these are the four you're most worried about," Shepard summarized.

"Yeah. Next I bet you're going to ask why am I still on Omega when I should be looking for them. It's because there's an STG agent nearby. He's actually retired, but he still has contacts. The STG is keeping an eye out on the colonies, and I was waiting for you to get back on your feet and find me. And why did I tell you all this?" Garrus paused. "It's because from what the STG can tell, these guys were seen heading toward each human colony or outpost in the Terminus before it was attacked."

"The prisoners are spotting targets for the Reapers," Shepard breathed.

"Yeah," Garrus agreed. "I don't know who or what is backing them up, but they're the scouts."

Shepard narrowed her eyes. "Who's your STG friend?"

"A salarian doctor working in the nearby district."

"Think he'd be willing to come with us?"

* * *

A man with dark skin stepped out of the docking area, swiveling his head as he looked for something of use. Finally, he spotted someone. "Hey there," he said, sidling up to the armored thug, who looked at him curiously. "How about a magic trick?" The scum was about to demand that the human make himself scarce when he saw a greenish glow in the human's eyes.

 _Dossier: Marcus Summers_

 _Before becoming a general and the highest ranking military official in the Alliance, he was a Captain in the US Army Rangers, often working with the American CIA on various covert operations._

 _When the Ethereal War began, he was one of the many soldiers with sufficient clearance to be drafted into the X-Com project. His original team consisted of Sergeant Sean 'Bucky' Pierce of the SAS, Lieutenant Hans 'Castle' Fuchtner from GSG9, and Sergeant Vasily 'Glaz' Kobanov of Spetznaz._

 _The only survivor of a disastrous first mission, he obtained the callsign 'Immortal' from the numerous impossible missions he returned from, usually carrying dead or injured team members back to base for treatment or burial._

 _During X-Com's study of psionic phenomena, he was discovered to possess the Gift, and volunteered to use the Gollop Device prior to the assault on the Temple Ship, a mission that he confessed to psychiatric personnel that he had never expected to survive. Due to this, he has the dubious honor of being one of the first and last soldiers to fight in the war._

 _His tenure as the supreme military commander has been one long period devoted to preventing any such war from occurring again. It has earned him a number of political enemies, though few indeed have the courage to challenge him or his position._

 _Appended: while he is publicly the solid and steady rock that the Alliance can rely on, his private habits have a number of worrying indications as to his mental state. Notably, he has a wall in his private quarters with the names of every single soldier who died under his field command, which he admits to spending an hour staring at every morning before his duties._

 **Can anyone guess who that person at the end is?  
**

 **With the explanation of the batarian pawn from last chapter, I'm sure some of you can figure out how much of a pain in the ass EXALT will be in the future. Heh heh heh...**

 **5 Coloured Walker: The problem with using fusion lances to deliver EMP bursts is the massive AOE and burst of gamma and neutron radiation. This prevents an Alliance ship from using it in a close engagement for fear of collateral damage. An electrolaser, while more complex, can be used to short out/disable single targets at close range, and stealthily if need be.**

 **Mass Effect ships are very light, and need to discharge static buildup in their hulls. What the Codex does not explain very well is why they have to do that.**

 **Basic electrical theory. Current flows from high potential to low. The lowest you can get is zero potential, or a ground. Usually, large machines such as generators use the chassis as a ground, to absorb current flow. On a planet, this ability to absorb current flow is effectively infinite, hence why most large machines ground to the Earth. But on a ship of measurable mass and limited space, there is a limit. Eventually, the absorbed current flow builds up to a point that the ship's hull or chassis cannot absorb any more, and it must discharge. Of course, there is a slow bleed effect as the charge dissipates into space over time, which is why space stations and satellites don't fry themselves periodically. But a ship generates more static buildup than can be passively bled off.**

 **That is the limitation of Citadel tech. The Alliance, by contrast, uses a 3-part grounding system. Two sets of general grounds, with the third for emergency use and as part of a recycling system that drains off the absorbed current and returns it to the system, boosting generator efficiency. This eliminates the need for the Alliance to discharge static build-up into atmosphere.**

 **The limitation of Mass Effect ships means that an electrolaser is specifically effective against them in a way that kinetic barriers can't hope to block. Electrolasers work by sending a massive charge down a plasma channel. Lightning is a natural example of this phenomenon. Electrical flow is not something physical that can be blocked. As long as the plasma stream makes contact between the Alliance ship and the Mass Effect ship, the weapon will disable the ship by inducing a giant current discharge inside, causing severe damage to electrical systems and potentially frying the crew alive.**

 **So just think: a simple modification to the plasma projector turns it into an unblockable weapon that is the bane of any Citadel ship (up to cruiser class) in a one-on-one scenario. If two or three Alliance Dreadnoughts fired this at a Reaper...well, I'm sure you can figure that out.**

 **The major weakness of the electrolaser would be decreased effectiveness on larger ships, and some difficulty in targeting smaller craft. But a tractor beam lockup fixes that problem real easily.**


	28. The Dark Threat Rises

**If there's anyone who DOESN'T get the shout outs below, I'll be very surprised.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Twenty Six

 **The Normandy, Flight Deck**

"And I thought my place was nice," Garrus whistled, looking around as he stepped off the shuttle.

"It's definitely a step up from the original," Shepard agreed. "Lieutenant, make sure our guests are quartered properly."

"Yes ma'am," the lieutenant and three enlisted marines moved forward to take the bags and equipment.

"Spartan accommodations," the salarian mused. "Sterile, utilitarian, understandable, military vessel. Curious as to duration of stay. Would enjoy opportunity to examine Alliance technology."

Shepard winced. In her eagerness to enlist a subject matter expert, she'd forgotten about information security. "EDI, make sure our sections are properly locked down."

"Right away, Shepard," the gynoid nodded, dropping her holographic disguise and moving off to equipment storage.

"Whoa, she was a robot?" Garrus asked.

"Yep," Shepard replied. "That was her combat body."

"Fascinating. Artificial intelligence, simulacrum indistinguishable from living being at a glance." The salarian scratched his chin. "Designated as 'combat body.' Remote use, not primary means of interaction. The shipboard intelligence, Captain?"

"She helps with running the ship, yes," Shepard answered, tentatively.

The salarian clapped his hands. "Wonderful. Look forward to working with her. Going to need workspace for lab equipment."

"Might I recommend setting up near the medical bay, Doctor Solus?" a speaker nearby chimed in.

"Perfect. Also look forward to consulting with Alliance medical personnel. Would welcome their insights."

"I'll show him over, ma'am," a nearby ensign volunteered.

"He has a way with words," Shepard noted as the salarian doctor moved off.

"Something about how being concise lets him work faster," Garrus explained. "That's what he told me when we met while working on the project."

"You said he retired from the STG."

"Yeah. He objected to their methods of experimentation. He was on the analysis team, but he resigned after the second generation of tests."

"I didn't think the STG would let someone like him just resign like that."

"Supposedly, he knows a lot of secrets other people would like to stay buried."

"Funny how that always seems to happen," Shepard mused. "Well, I'll have Pressly give you the tour. I'm going to see if my boss has any leads for me yet."

 **Omega, Unknown Location**

The only thing that stopped Tarak from pulling a gun on the salarian across the room was the knowledge that his guards would quickly ensure it was the last thing he did on this miserable rock.

"What are you doing here, Jaroth?" he growled.

"I was invited here for a meeting," the Eclipse commander snapped. "Same as you."

"A likely story," the batarian snarled. "I'm more inclined to think you spied on me."

"As if I'm interested in stalking your worthless hide. I have bigger problems to worry about."

The door slammed open, and both men looked toward it to see a large krogan and several vorcha enter the establishment. "Well well, Jaroth and Tarak," the krogan grinned. "I could get rich today if I brought in your heads."

"Just try and take them," Tarak warned, reaching for his pistol.

"Gentlemen, as Jaroth said, you have bigger problems to worry about," a new voice cut in. "Though if you really want to go at each other, feel free."

"Human!" Tarak roared, lunging to his feet and snatching his pistol, only to discover it wasn't there.

"You're missing something…" the human noted in a sing-song voice as he emerged from the shadows.

Tarak stared at his empty hand, dumbfounded. Meanwhile, Jaroth eyed the human in contemplation. "Our contact, I presume?"

"You presume correctly," the dark-skinned human grinned. "Now before we get down to business, anyone up for a show? Because I got a nice magic trick here."

Tarak gestured to one of his bodyguards, ignoring the human holding up an object in his fingers. "Now, I'm going to make this bullet disappear. Watch,"

The bodyguard was leveling his pistol just as the human waved his free hand across the front of the bullet in his fingers. Only Jaroth noticed the faint flash of green before the bullet vanished. The bodyguard jerked as a muted wet sound indicated exactly where the bullet went, before slumping bonelessly to the ground.

"Ta-da!" The human exclaimed, spreading his hands. "It's…magical!"

Everyone stared at the deceased batarian before turning back to the human, who snapped his fingers.

"You might want to clean that off. Seltzer water and lemon will get rid of blood real nicely," he offered, pointing at Tarak's now blood-stained clothing. "That suit doesn't look cheap. You ought to know. You bought it."

The krogran let out a deep throaty chuckle while Tarak glared daggers at the human. But before he could do anything, Jaroth cut in. "I'd like to hear what he says, if you don't mind," he said, eying the batarian, who sullenly sat back down.

"So listen," the human said, grabbing a chair and resting his chin on the back. "I know you've all been having problems lately. You've been losing your drug trade, you just had a warehouse of expensive toys go kablooey, and you are losing vorcha left and right. I also know who's behind it all."

"Everyone knows," Tarak growled. "That damned Archangel."

"And I got a solution for you."

"Do tell," Jaroth said sardonically.

"Well it's very simple. It's that we kill the Archangel."

"If it's so simple, why don't you do it yourself?"

"Ah, if you're good at something, never do it for free," the human waggled a finger. "You're a businessman. You know there's no profit from free service, right?"

The krogan laughed again. "I like this human," he grinned. "What do you propose?"

"Well, I have it on good authority that the Archangel just left Omega." The three mercenary leaders straightened up at that. "So now's the time to take out his 'guardian angels' while the leader's away. Set up something juicy and let them come and take it."

"And draw him back here so we can make an example of him," Jaroth finished, "right?"

"Feh," Tarak snorted. "I don't need a human's help to do that."

"Oh you're going to," the human retorted. "See, his little angels are on their way over here right now. A little birdy told them about this meeting."

Everyone stiffened as the human peeled back his lips in a sinister smile. "Guess who?"

 **The Normandy, Fitness area**

Garrus sat up and stretched, savoring the mild burning in his chest as he finished his warm-up. Behind him, he could hear the Marine captain leading his men in their routine.

"Helljumper helljumper, where you been?"

"FEET FIRST INTO HELL AND BACK AGAIN!"

"When I die please bury me deep!"

"PLANT MY RIFLE BY MY FEET!"

"Don't you cry, don't shed no tear!"

"JUST PACK MY BOX WITH PT GEAR!"

"'Cause one morning 'bout zero four!"

"EARTH WILL SHAKE AND THE SKIES WILL POUR!"

"Don't you worry, don't come undone!"

"IT'S JUST MY GHOST ON A PT RUN!"

"Helljumper?" Garrus asked another marine doing bench presses with an impressive amount of weight. The marine's spotter eased the bar back onto the rack, allowing him to sit up and wipe the sweat off his brow.

"Orbital drop troops," the corporal replied. "We go down into hell, meaning enemy territory. First in, last out."

Garrus whistled. "That sounds fun."

The Marine nodded. "It can get real exciting, but that's what we get paid for." The man lay back down on the bench. "Pop on another ten, will you?"

The turian eyed the crowd of humans pounding at the track like no tomorrow. They'd just started their run when he walked in, fifteen minutes ago, and still kept going. He knew that he was nowhere near in as good shape as they were, not the least because it had been almost a decade since his time in Blackwatch. _Well, no time like the present. Can't let them think that Spectres are wimps._

His omnitool rang, drawing his attention. _I still have no idea how I can get Extranet access on an Alliance ship._ "Hey, Melenis."

 _"Leaving so soon, Garrus?"_ The salarian chided good-naturedly.

"I did have a mission. I'll be back though," Garrus promised.

 _"Too bad. You might just miss out on us clearing the place out. We just got a call. Apparently, Tarak, Jaroth and Nord are meeting together someplace. Perfect opportunity to decapitate the gangs."_

"Aw damn," Garrus whined.

 _"Don't worry. We'll save some for you, boss."_

"No you won't. I know you and Ripper were bitching about how I grab all the kills."

 _"Yeah, you're right. I just wanted to give you some false hope and then yank it away."_

"Asshole."

 _"Have fun out there. We'll hold the fort."_

"See you when I get back." Garrus looked back up to see the captain jogging towards him.

"Howdy, sir," the man said, offering a hand. "Captain Antonio Silva."

"Spectre Garrus Vakarian," the turian shook hands with the Marine. "You guys love running, don't you?"

"Helps us catch our prey. Think you can keep up with us?" the captain challenged.

"Time to find out," Garrus grinned.

 **Omega, Unknown location**

Tarak rose to his feet in rage. _"YOU-"_

"Ah ah ahh, you don't want to do that," the human admonished. "I'm the one holding all the cards here. No really," he reached inside his vest and drew out a pack of cards, fanning them out. "I'm holding all the cards." He grinned nightmarishly, holding up an Ace of Diamonds, which glowed light green in the darkened room. "Want to see what I can do with them?"

The memory of his loyal bodyguard dropping like a stone flickered in his eyes for a moment, and then it felt like some outside compulsion pushed him back into his seat.

"You'll forgive me if I have some issues with this 'offer' of yours," Jaroth spoke up. "In the first place, I'd like to know who you are working for. Secondly, in my experience with law enforcement officers, if you kill one, his comrades will redouble their efforts to find the one responsible and retaliate. Rumor has it that Archangel is a Spectre. The Spectres are not as…restrained as their fellows in C-Sec. As you say, I am a businessman. I am not in the habit of taking unnecessary risks. And your suggestion is fraught with unnecessary risk."

"Coward," Nord rumbled. "You would run away from here with your tail between your legs?"

"I didn't come here to save Eclipse's operations on Omega," the salarian retorted. "I came here to _salvage_ them, to take what was leftover and move them somewhere more profitable and less risky."

In an abandoned apartment building three blocks away, two humans lay side by side. One was staring through a rifle scope, centering the cross-hairs a scant two centimeters above a silhouette in the window. The other peered through a set of field binoculars. Meanwhile, two more figures approached the back left corner, assault rifles in hand.

"Archangel killed your brother," Tarak growled. "If it was my kin, I'd want his head."

"Arnoth was an idiot," Jaroth replied. "Only an idiot steps up to fight a losing battle. Killing Archangel may benefit us in the short term, but only until the other Spectres figure out who was responsible. At that point, they'll hunt us down individually. And while each of us represents a large and powerful group, I doubt any of us in this room has the resources to challenge a government."

"So I take it you're not going to accept my offer, then?" the human asked.

Jaroth stood. "You three can play war with a nation state if you want. I have better things to do. I'm getting out before the Guardians come for us."

The human eyed a conspicuous red dot on the glass behind the salarian. "Too late…" he noted in a sing-song voice.

The large chip of ferrous material flew across open space at relativistic speed, easily piercing the regular plate glass window and continuing straight for its target. Jaroth never saw or heard the shot that took half his skull with it.

Tarak dived to the ground as his second bodyguard threw himself on top. Nord and his vorcha, astonishingly for krogan and vorcha, spread out like trained soldiers. Of course, being a small building, there was only so much area available.

And the human caught a glowing green rifle that flew from behind the bar counter and literally slapped the trigger just as the muzzle passed over the apartment where the sniper-spotter team was, startling them as a return shot flew right between them.

"I spy with my little eye something red and something dead~!" he added as he shouldered the rifle properly and fired again. The sniper had been shifting his aim to the man when the second shot tore through the right side of helmet, splattering the spotter with blood and bits of his face.

"Shit!" the man yelped into his radio. "Weaver's down!"

The other two figures exchanged a cold glance. Their group had come close to losing a people before, but this was a first. The scum would pay.

The strange human gestured, and two tables glowed green before shifting themselves in the room. One mashed itself into the window, blocking the sightline. The other turned sideways and flew straight through the doorway. The sound of the doorframe shearing off the central stand was the only thing that saved the gunman preparing to enter the building. The turian barely threw himself out of the way in time as the slab of material sailed past him, clattering into the street as the green glow faded.

His comrade, a human, threw in a flash grenade that had been cooked for two seconds. It exploded on impact, and he dove into the building only to be surrounded by a glowing green aura.

"Sorry, no visitors allowed! Run along home now!" the man cackled as he directed the unfortunate gunman's body to leave at high velocity.

The turian peered through the doorway before hurriedly withdrawing as a number of angry vorcha unleashed a hail of suppression fire. He snarled to himself before pulling out a strange pistol gifted to him by a salarian friend and fired once through the doorway. He was rewarded with screams and the smell of burning flesh as the projectile exploded twice: first releasing a cloud of highly flammable gases, and then a small pyrotechnic charge that ignited the cloud and everything in it.

"Ow…" the human muttered as he picked himself off the street, having skidded a fair distance away from the building. "Vortash, this thing just went sideways. Let's pull out."

Vortash fired a second time before turning tail and running to the building they'd approached from. Both men vanished from sight before the remaining vorcha and one very scorched and angry krogan spilled onto the street, futilely searching for their prey.

Tarak tentatively looked up as the dust and ash settled, then rankled his nose in disgust at the scent of roasted flesh. His remaining bodyguard eased off of him and helped him to his feet. He dusted himself off, then looked over to see the human holding a severed and blackened vorcha leg, looking almost poised to bite into the tendons. The human grinned toothily at the nauseated expressions he received from both batarians. "Yeah, I'm just fucking with you," he said, throwing the limb away. "I'm crazy, but not that crazy."

Nord stomped in, seething with displeasure at being denied a fight. "They got away!" he growled.

"Not all of them," the human answered with that same infuriating smirk that made Tarak want to put a hole in his face. The only thing stopping him from doing so was the recent display of skill and that strange power of his. "One little piggy is dead. That's one more than any of you ever managed."

"Maybe we should work with him, sir," the bodyguard whispered. "It's probably safer if we're on his side."

Tarak gritted his teeth. It went against every fiber of his being to work with a human, but this particular one had proven himself to be exceptionally dangerous, even unarmed. Not to mention clearly unstable, considering how unconcerned the man had been while dealing with four vigilantes on his own. Better to stand out of his line of fire.

"I'll work with you to get rid of Archangel," he spat, "but I definitely don't trust you, human."

"Works for me," the krogan noted, now somewhat calmer than before as his regenerative ability soothed the pain from being burned. "Hopefully it'll be a good fight."

"Oh you won't have to worry about that," the human smiled. "And what about you, frog-boy?"

The Eclipse adjutant stiffened indignantly, then remembered how casually the human had dealt with the Guardian's attack. He considered his own position. With Jaroth out of the picture, it fell to him to consolidate Eclipse's efforts on Omega. He would need a suitable demonstration of his own capabilities before he could trust his men to follow him in pulling out like his boss had intended to. "You'll have the support of Eclipse," he answered, reluctantly.

"See boys? That wasn't so hard!" the dark-skinned human laughed. "The name's 'Jester,' and you'll be hearing from me real soon."

 **The Olympus, Secure Communications**

"Since the attacks have mainly been concentrated in a certain area of the Terminus Systems, Director Harper and I agreed to send in a liaison group to a few of those colonies, along with specialized equipment to help those independent groups fend for themselves." He fought to keep the displeasure at agreeing with the man off his face. "You might be interested to know that among the staff we sent over is one of your former crew, Lieutenant Ashley Williams."

 _"Nice to hear she's back on her feet, sir,"_ Shepard noted. _"What kind of equipment do they have?"_

"Each colony has an augmented company of marines as well as technicians setting up a networked defense system for the colonists. We've kept it quiet so the Citadel doesn't get antsy, and so the enemy won't have any warning beforehand."

 _"So if the Reaper forces attack any of them, they won't be able to scrub the evidence this time around."_

"That's the plan," Hackett agreed. "But you know that plans go out the window when the first shot is fired."

 _"It works both ways,"_ Shepard pointed out. _"Once the enemy forces are exposed, we'll be able to identify them and start countering them. They'll have to change tactics, and we'll have the initiative."_

"In theory, we would," Hackett reminded her. "Real life is not that simple. For now, just keep an eye out and be ready to move at a moment's notice. And make sure the Spectre is trained up on our equipment. Considering the scale of the potential threat against us, I'm willing to overlook a few security violations."

 _"I'm thinking of showing him the HADES armor and doing a bit of drop training for him, sir."_

"Approved," Hackett answered without a second thought. "You're the field officer. Use your best judgement."

 _"Thanks for that vote of confidence sir,"_

 **Omega, Guardian hideout**

The mood was somber, though not quite dismal. Intellectually, they had known it was only a matter of time before the odds caught up to them. It still stung them all to lose a friend.

"See? That's him," Ripper said, pointing at the fuzzy silhouette. "He's the one who killed Weaver."

"Not a familiar face," Sensat noted. The batarian had an eidetic memory for individuals, which had served him well as a Free Batarian hunter-killer.

"He threw a fucking table at me," Vortash muttered.

"Can you enhance the image?" Monteague asked.

One moment later, the image from the helmet camera became more focused as Butler tweaked the program. "That's about as good as I can get it," he apologized.

"The STG has a multi-input enhancer designed for this," Melenis interjected. "Give me a day, and I can really clean this up."

"No need," Erash replied, walking into the room. "I got Sidonis and Mierin tailing them. And before you ask, yes, they're staying as far back as they can. Here's a good picture."

Vortash snatched up the datapad, grunted, then threw it on the table. "Next time, that scum is dead," he growled.

 _Codex: High Altitude Deployment System_

 _The HADES system was developed using the old Archangel armor from the Ethereal war for the purpose of allowing spaceborne deployment of light infantry expeditionary forces for areas covered by defensive systems.  
_

 _The armor incorporates a powerful mass effect generator and a two-part shell. The external shell is composed of tough ceramic that can withstand the heat of atmospheric reentry. Behind the plates is a layer of biodegradeable gel that absorbs any extra heat and serves as an impact cusion for the soldier inside. The outer layer is shed once terminal velocity is reached, allowing the soldier to control the rest of the descent with the use of the Mass Effect repulsors. Unusually for Alliance military equipment, it operates with no Elerium whatsoever._

 _The second part of HADES is the equipment drop pod, which lands in an area cleared out by the troops carrying the equipment necessary for the light infantry to breach emplacements and clear out a landing zone for more conventional forces to follow. Without the drop pod, HADES troopers must make do with Mass Effect or Laser weapons designed for anti infantry purposes._

 _HADES troopers, nicknamed "Helljumpers," have the most strenuous mission requirements of the regular military. Various specialized regiments exist for the sole purpose of training these formations for deployment. Every Predator Commando has attended Helljumper School at one point or another._

 **Considering the various kinds of atmospheres found on different planets (ie, much more dense or thin, corrosive gases, extreme heat, cold), performing sub-orbital deployment with HALO (High Altitude-Low Opening) or HAHO (High Altitude High Opening) equipment is impractical.  
**

 **So far, no one's guessed who 'Jester' really is.**

 **Now that I'm a good ways into this story, I'd like to hand out a few pointers to fellow or budding writers.**

 **One of my biggest pet peeves on is repetitive language usage. I can't stand stories where, for example, the author only uses one word or phrase over and over again. "He said..." "She said..." "They said..." over and over, the author only uses that one word to indicate dialogue, for example. The simplest solution is VOCABULARY. Words are the building blocks, the tools you use, to tell a story. The fewer you have, the more limited you are.**

 **Another thing is when people over-explain parts of their story WHILE IN-STORY. Usually, this takes the form of a character monologuing. While sometimes you need to clarify things for your audience, don't patronize them by assuming everyone is an idiot. Part of the thrill of being a reader is figuring out the little parts of the story yourself. If you take that away, you are depriving much of your audience of something they enjoy about a story: suspense.**

 **Third, you can't please everyone. Most of the reviews I've received are positive. Some are negative, but they offer criticism and genuine feedback. And then there's a miniscule amount that boils down to "you suck, bai." Some authors deal with this by lashing out or chronically attempting to justify themselves and their story, and this can bleed into the writing. Don't fall into that trap. I did once, and it's part of the reason why my two earliest stories are currently discontinued.**

 **Fourth, don't write for the ending. Write for the next scene. With anything you do, if you stay focused only on the end goal, It'll feel like you're never making progress. You'll lose your drive. That's why I haven't updated my other three stories. I made that mistake, and now I can't get back in the mood to finish those. I think this is the most common pitfall that authors on this site fall into.**

 **My recommendation, which works for me at least, is go by chapter. Each chapter, formulate an image of what you want to say next. What awesome scene to write, what questions to answer, what are the next questions you want your audience to ask, etc. The key to a good story is keeping your audience engaged. Keep them wanting more. Keep leaving things open so they come back to find out what your devious mind will cook up next. Fun fact: I have no written outline. I've been writing this story by the seat of my pants since the very beginning. I take it in small segments and think very hard about the immediate scene, not the ending. And then I type it up. I'm not saying this approach is for everyone. Do what works for you.**

 **Finally, Spelling and Grammar. This is something that I attribute to pure laziness. We have spellcheck. We have Websters Dictionary online. We have other authors from which to learn proper sentence structure. If English is not your native language, I apologize. But for everyone else, take time and pride in your writing. Don't fucking use textchat or leetspeak in your stories. I will hunt you down and clobber you over the face with a dictionary.**

 **Anyways, until next time!**


	29. Setups

**Some minor shipping. Honestly, romance is my biggest weak spot as an author, hence why I've mainly skipped out on those kinds of interactions.**

 **Read and review!**

Chapter Twenty seven

 **The Normandy, Flight Deck**

"Nervous?" the captain smirked knowingly as the Spectre examined each part of his newly-commissioned HADES armor before tentatively strapping it to his body.

"A little," Garrus grudgingly admitted, figuring that Shepard would instantly be able to tell if he lied, "especially about the part where I'm going to be surrounded by friction-plasma at about 3000 of your degrees traveling at hypersonic speed straight down."

"Oh that's the easy part," Captain Silva quipped. "Only rookies worry about that. Me? I worry that the tech boys might have forgotten to turn the control unit on the armor on, leaving me tumbling in free-fall with a half-ton metal suit and a wonky manual control system."

"And no parachute," Shepard added with a smile. "Don't forget that part."

"Thanks," Garrus replied sarcastically. "I really needed to be reminded about the lack of a real safety system right before I do this for the first time.

"Not technically true," Doctor Solus rebuked as he examined a copy of the armor schematics with a critical eye. "Numerous safety systems installed. Crystalline accelerometers, actuator system overrides, tertiary redundant mass effect repulsor systems…"

"Great, I'll be the most well-equipped turian to die on an atmospheric free-fall," the Spectre griped.

"It ain't the fall that kills you," Lieutenant Colonel Davenport commented as he looked on the scene in amusement. "It's that sudden stop at the end."

"Ah, if that happens, you won't feel a thing!" Silva laughed, slapping the armored pauldron.

"True. Impact likely to occur at transonic speeds too fast for nervous system to register pain response," Mordin mused.

"Alright, that's enough razzing the new guy," the gunnery sergeant said as he stomped over, also wearing HADES armor. "Ready, sir?"

Garrus let out a sigh. "As ready as I'll ever be. Let's get this over with."

The two walked over to the deployment stations, where the sergeant did a thorough check of both stations and their equipment before nodding to the technicians. As Garrus slid into his pod and linked into the Normandy's communications net, he wondered once again how much of a lunatic he was to agree to this. Probably just as much of a lunatic as he was to go around in primarily close-quarters engagements with only a sniper rifle, as he usually did.

 _"System checks are good. The pods are ready for the drop,"_ the technician announced.

 _"Alright, so here's how this is going to go, sir,"_ the sergeant called. _"The ship will shoot us out, and we'll head straight down to the LZ. It's already programmed into your pod, and you should see the overlay in your helmet, so you know where to go if something happens. The computer will blow the shell at the proper time. If it doesn't, slap the panic button on the center of your chest. That'll trigger the manual blow. There's a safety range of about ten seconds once you hit the second stage point, so don't dawdle on that, sir."_

"Got it," Garrus answered.

 _"I heard you've done jump training in your time in the Hierarchy, so you should know how to reorient yourself in the air. Once the shell blows, set yourself up feet first. The armor should automatically activate the thrusters to slow you down. They'll do a constant burn until you land. When we land, be ready for some ground action. My boys will be waiting to simulate an enemy welcome mat. You'll have to show that you can keep your wits about you. After that, we head back up to the ship."_

"I'm going to need a few drinks after this, I bet," the turian muttered.

 _"Don't feel bad sir. We all did on our first time."_

"Too late…"

 _"Approaching launch point in fifteen seconds,"_

It seemed like the longest fifteen seconds of his life as he waited for the insanity to begin. Then he felt like his liver shot into his pelvis as the Normandy ejected him toward the planet. The gel cushion surrounding the internal self-destructing framework protected him from the g-forces well enough that his vision didn't blur at all. He tentatively eyed the informative linkup from the pod, particularly the thermal readout, which was fast approaching the melting point of steel.

The gel cushions began to boil as heat bled through the external ceramic plates. The heat they absorbed gave them the illusion of luminescence. Even with the armored suit around him, he could feel a slight rise in temperature. He stared at the altimeter as it rapidly wound down, hoping that the heat would abate just as soon as...

Even forewarned, the detonation of the explosive bolts startled him. The gel cushions exploded, flashing to vapor as the seals containing them opened up to the atmosphere while the ceramic plates fractured and flew apart. It took three agonizing seconds before he remembered the next step. With effort, he spread his arms from his body, slowing down his torso relative to the rest of himself. Now falling limbs outstretched, he leaned backward slightly, allowing the wind to flip him around before crossing his arms over his chest, ending with his heels toward the ground.

To his enormous personal relief, he felt a hard jerk throughout his body as the armor's repulsor "wings" deployed and activated to slow his descent. An indicator icon flared on his helmet display, and he looked over to see the sergeant in a similar state.

The landing was harder than he'd expected, though quite similar to the force that would result from a parachute landing. He rolled with the impact, stopping with his palms flat on the ground. Then he instinctively grabbed the training rifle he'd dropped with before throwing himself sideways to avoid a hail of slugs from an Alliance Marine corporal.

The gunnery sergeant stood up and watched carefully as the Spectre evaded the gunfire and planted several well-aimed shots on the fireteam over the course of five minutes before he howled an end to the exercise. "I'd say you kept your wits about you well enough, sir," he commented as the turian stood tall, enjoying the euphoric high that came with surviving a stressful event.

"I bet your boys aren't too happy," Garrus noted, eyeing the staff sergeant who was screaming at his "dead" men for choosing a particularly poor firing position.

"The sergeant up there made a bet with Captain Silva on this. That's why he's pissed," the old soldier grinned behind his helmet as he watched a specialist wipe off the paint from his flak vest. "Now he owes the Captain a case of Jack Daniels whiskey."

"Sounds expensive," Garrus smirked.

"Imported from Earth? You bet it is. So how'd you like your first drop?"

"I was praying that the damned thing wouldn't blow out on me."

"With dense anti-air defenses, it could," the sergeant pointed out, "but we don't drop under those conditions. We'd go in after the Normandy blasted the area first. The only thing that might take you out on a for-real drop is atmospheric turbulence."

"I'm just glad I get to walk away from this."

"Yep, any landing you can walk away from is a good one."

 _"Arkbird to ground-pounders: you boys about done down there?"_ Lieutenant Colonel Nagase called.

"Ready for pickup when you are, ma'am."

 **Illium, Nos Astra**

Liara wiped the sweat from her brow as her "father" looked on in approval. "At least you can hold your own against a real commando now," Matriarch Aethyta noted.

The commando opposite the archaeologist dusted off her gauntlets and walked off to take a shower, leaving Liara to consider her progress in the past five years.

 _Never again,_ she'd sworn, _never will I be so useless. I couldn't save my mother, and I was more of a burden against Saren._ She'd foregone her studies, placing her academic career on hold despite Dr. Gen'aris's best pleas in favor of combat training to make use of her prodigious biotic abilities. Truthfully, she hadn't expected to run into her "father," but in hindsight it had been inevitable. Aethyta had been keeping track of her from a distance since her earliest days.

"Now you know my signature technique and Nezzie's," the matriarch said. "But you're a long way from mastering them."

Liara thumped her fist against the floor, simultaneously releasing a wave of biotic energy and cracking the concrete. "I think it'll be good enough for now," she answered, eyeing the damage with a surge of satisfaction.

"Don't settle for 'good enough,'" Aethyta warned. "You always want to be better. Never know when you might need that extra oomph."

Liara nodded absently, her mind already moving ahead to the next set of lessons her father had to teach her. As a matriarch, Aethyta had a large network of contacts across the galaxy that she could tap at any time for information, which she rarely did. Unlike a number of other asari, Aethyta was one of the few who took what Liara said about the oncoming Reaper threat seriously. She was now learning how important the information trade was, and how to become a spymaster of her own.

For training purposes (though the way her father's eyes had twinkled suggested other motives), Liara had been using the contacts to keep track of Garrus, knowing that Shepard would inevitably contact him to deal with the attacks on independent human colonies. They'd recently reported that Archangel had vanished from Omega, leaving his new team of Guardian Angels behind, which would suggest that contact had been made.

Part of her was irritated (a traitorous part of her mind used the word "jealous") that Shepard had decided to grab the Spectre first. She had the entirety of the Hypathia Institute archives at her disposal to contribute for information. And she knew for sure that her father had a better information network than the Spectre did. But, she admitted, Garrus would grant her political advantages that were out of her own reach, and he was far her superior in combat experience and knowledge of military secrets.

 _Well,_ she thought to herself as she went to the showers, peeling off the sweat-soaked clothing, _Shepard will have to come talk to me eventually._

* * *

The Alliance would have to meet her eventually, he told himself as he kept his lonely vigil. And when they did, he could get the answers he sought.

It was odd, he reflected, how personally invested he'd become in the mystery concerning that human assassin he'd encountered five years ago. After his recovery, he'd thrown himself into investigating the murder of that asari clerk, who'd surely been the target. There was nobody else who'd been killed so cleanly and without a trace.

After being exposed, an assassin realistically had two choices: accelerate the timetable, or back off the target. That human had obviously chosen the former, killing the asari that same night they'd dueled in the parking garage. His own sources on the streets spoke of attempted corporate blackmail, which he dismissed as a cover story. He'd fought and killed humans in the short part of his career that they'd immigrated into the Council territories. None of them had the capabilities of that one man. Few were those who became that skilled without an institution to back them up, and those with such backers did not hire out as corporate assassins. That strange disorientation ability he'd experienced suggested Psionics, which narrowed down the backer to exactly one possible candidate. Only the Alliance had psionics.

The Alliance assassin had targeted a seemingly random asari clerk for a reason. Private digging revealed Hegemony sympathies and a family history involving a batarian grandfather. Ironically, that long-deceased batarian had served in the military, yet freed his family slaves and married one upon his discharge, moving into the Terminus. It seemed a massive contradiction that a servant of that slaving institution would free his slaves and still bear deep loyalty to the institution, but not really worth dwelling on. Personal motives were often contradictory in his own experience.

An asari with Hegemony sympathies being targeted by the Alliance would imply support of, or involvement with, the pirate groups who periodically attempted to raid Alliance territory. That asinine cover story had to be an attempt to conceal from any compatriots the fact that she'd been exposed. So she'd had a network of associates that the Alliance had been pursuing, and she'd been important enough for the Alliance to act overtly.

But that brought the question of why. Surely the Alliance could have simply "tapped" her computer and acquired the information covertly. Dead men or women tell no tales. So why kill the woman instead of leaving her alive as an unwitting source of information? Was her position compromising to someone else? Who else might there be? And did his attempt at intervention put his family in danger?

That, he thought ruefully, was the real reason he was invested in this. When the potential enemies he might have made that night included a galactic superpower, it was imperative for him to investigate everything, the better to know what potential danger he or his family were in as a result of his own stupidity.

And so here he was, having vanished from his wife and son for the past five years, with only the barest of contact to assuage their worries for his safety. He'd refused to tell them why he'd suffered that lung injury or what he'd done that night, reasoning that it was better for them to be safe and ignorant, than risk danger. He was the one most familiar with it, and most prepared.

"But not prepared enough it would seem,"

Reacting on instinct, he whirled around, preparing a biotic pulse when he stumbled. His foot had frozen mid-step, refusing to obey the commands of his mind, throwing him off balance. He reflexively leaned left, intending to use his left arm to stabilize himself enough to aim his attack properly. But now his arms refused to obey. He crashed to the floor, lacking any of his customary grace. And now his entire body was frozen. He couldn't move even to look at his attacker.

"For almost a week, I've felt you watching Dr. T'Soni," a woman's voice commented lightly. "It's why I never showed. You're really too curious for your own good, Thane Krios."

An icy chill shot through his body. His name! She knew his name! How?! Unless she was-

"Psionic? Why yes I am. That also means I know about…Irikah and Kolyat, was it?" The light chuckling was somehow the most terrifying thing he'd ever heard in his life. He mentally redoubled his efforts to move, but all he accomplished was to twitch his limbs slightly.

"Oh don't worry about them. As long as you weren't stupid enough to tell them about what you've found out, we won't have any reason to go after them," the woman noted.

"I…didn't…" he gasped into the floor. "…they know…nothing…"

The woman clapped her hands. "Alright then, that's that. Now I know why you've been watching Dr. T'Soni. You've been waiting for us to show up. And you seem like you know a few things. Why don't you tell me that they are?"

Knowing the implied consequences for refusing to cooperate (which earned him an indignant snort as the thought crossed his mind), he mentally reviewed what he knew. "Alliance…killed…that asari...didn't…make sense…why."

Though he couldn't see it, he could imagine the woman's nonplussed expression. "Why wouldn't we? She was laundering money for the batarian pirates and rebel groups."

"Why…kill her…instead of… _using_ her?"

That brought her up short. After a moment's thought, she shrugged to herself. "That's above my paygrade. It doesn't make sense, but I don't see the whole picture or make decisions."

Thane almost laughed in spite of his predicament at the woman's relative naiveté. "Killed her…to conceal…something?"

"From who?" she demanded. "Her fellow Hegemony supporters? The Citadel? Why would we care enough to kill her in order to hide something?"

"Maybe…someone inside…Alliance…to hide from…"

Surprisingly, there was no immediate response. He'd evidently touched a nerve with that suggestion. Suddenly, he could move his limbs. He scrambled to his feet and took a few steps back from the woman, who he could now see had black hair and was wearing a very form-fitting black and white suit. And a scrutinizing expression.

"You think she was killed to hide something from the Alliance," she mused, all traces of amusement gone. "But the order to kill her came from high up in my organization." _And Director Harper transferred me to Admiral Hackett's command until further notice,_ she thought to herself.

"Perhaps there's a traitor in your organization," Thane ventured, muscles tense and ready for fight or flight.

"Maybe…" the woman agreed. "And you only care about this because you wanted to know if you pissed us off enough to go after you, right?"

"My family is my highest priority," Thane answered warily.

The woman eyed him thoughtfully. "Would you mind working with me? I've been wondering a few things myself. Maybe you can help me get to the bottom of this."

Thane knew it was a stupid question, but he had to ask. "And if I refused?"

"Well since I don't really know you, I'd just go by standard procedure and cauterize leaks," the woman replied briskly. "And I'm sure you know what that would mean…" she trailed off.

"If it keeps my family safe…" Thane said, extending his hand with a visible lack of enthusiasm.

"The name's Lawson," she told him, shaking his hand. "Look forward to this."

 **The Normandy, Command Deck**

Garrus wandered onto the bridge, where Shepard was leaning against the wall, reading an update message. "Anything?"

Shepard sighed and shut off the display. "Nothing on our end, and I assume nothing on your end either."

"Mordin's STG contacts haven't found anything new yet. But they will," he said confidently.

Shepard was about to reply when they both heard the beeping of Garrus's omnitool.

"You know, I've been wondering how exactly people can still message me on an Alliance ship?" Garrus mused aloud.

"We have interface nodes on our ships just in case we need to coordinate or communicate with your people," EDI answered through a nearby speaker.

Garrus slapped his forehead. "Of course. Should have thought of that one before. Hello?"

 _"Is this Spectre Vakarian?"_ an unfamiliar voice emanated from the omnitool.

"Speaking. Who's this?"

 _"Don't have much time, sir,"_ the man at the other end commented. _"Name's Kal'Reegar. Tali gave me this number. Told me to call it if we ran into trouble."_

Garrus shared a look with Shepard. "What's wrong?"

 _"Sir, my boys and I were ordered by her father to keep her safe. We ran into the geth on Haestrom. They got her prisoner."_

"What was she doing on Haestrom?" Garrus asked, ignoring the inquisitive look from the captain.

 _"Well you know how she's been real interested in the history of the Morning War the last five years? She was heading there to do some research. Turns out the geth staked out the whole planet. They surrounded us after we landed. Only reason we're still alive is because she bargained with them to let us go."_

"She 'bargained' with them?" Garrus repeated skeptically.

 _"I can't go back to the admiral without her, and I don't know anyone else who might be able to get her off the planet. We sure as hell wouldn't make it, and you know what the fleet says about her right now."_

"Haestrom, you said?"

 _"Yes sir."_

"On our way. Sit tight."

"What did he mean 'what the fleet says about her right now?'" Shepard asked.

"Tali's been raising hell with the Migrant Fleet over how the geth think the quarians committed a crime," Garrus explained. "A lot of them have labeled her a geth sympathizer, and she was pressured into leaving the fleet on a sabbatical. I'm sure you can guess how that goes."

"I can imagine," Shepard nodded.

"It's not strictly part of the mission, but she is a friend. Can we head out?"

"EDI, tell Joker to set a course for Haestrom," Shepard ordered.

"Right away."

"Just a friend, Garrus?" Shepard asked with a smirk as the ship began to move. "Even though you gave her your number, she's 'just a friend?'"

"Yeah…" Garrus trailed off, not liking where this was going.

"Okay, if you say so~!" Shepard walked off to the elevator with a grin, ignoring Garrus protesting the platonic nature of said 'friendship.'

 _Codex: Project Culexus_

 _As per their cultural standards, the Salarian Union immediately began formulating countermeasures to employ against the Alliance upon first contact. However, technological superiority and the public reveal of Psionic abilities forced an unprecedented scrapping of said countermeasures and a frantic search for new ones._

 _Project Culexus developed out of desperation as a joint effort with the Turian Hierarchy and the Asari Republics to produce soldiers capable of standing toe-to-toe with Alliance Psi Operatives and soldiers._

 _Remote study of the fragments of Sovereign and the corpse of Saren Arterius revealed that Reaper technology is impregnated with organic nanites which perform a similar function to the Alliance Meld substance. When embedded with cybernetic augmentations in a living body, the nanites flawlessly integrate extreme modifications into the body, avoiding Rejection Syndrome and synergizing with the host to a degree unmatched by current Council Races biomedical techniques. However, the nanites also infiltrate the host nervous system, possibly affecting brain function and "reprogramming" the host in accordance with Reaper directives._

 _*Note: This 'Indoctrination' phenomenon has also been observed occurring with control sample subjects physically isolated but located near fragments of Sovereign, suggesting an additional unknown vector._

 _Stage Zero was the 'infection' of condemned test subjects with cybernetics and fragments of Reaper technology with the goal of producing augmented specimens for dissection and reverse-engineering._

 _Stage One was an insurance stage, implanting the first generation of reverse-engineered implants in a new batch of condemned test subjects to search for flaws and eliminate Indoctrination._

 _Stage Two was similar to Stage One of the program, though incomplete due to the escape of the test subjects._

 _Final Stage (theoretical) will be the production of Culexus Operatives whose mere presence affects Psionic individuals in much the same way that Sovereign's arrival on the Citadel adversely affected Ambassador Udina, who is suspected to be psionic himself. These agents would be able to root out and easily counter Psionic soldiers by rendering it impossible for them to use their abilities and physically crippling them by close proximity._

 **Shepard is such a troll, isn't she?  
**

 **Miranda demonstrates some of her brand of Psionics. Her side of the story will mainly be revealing the extent of EXALT's infiltration.**

 **I did not plan out this homage to WH40K. I only realized after the fact that the goal of the Council project would be to produce agents with very similar abilities to the Culexus Clade of assassins from Warhammer 40K.**

 **WH Culexus assassins can literally kill psykers, daemons and Tyranids with a glance. Their very presence strips away otherworldly powers and influences.**

 **The Culexus soldiers wouldn't be quite as dangerous, but they would be something for a Psionic Commando to fear. If the enemy can give you a severe migraine just by being in the same operating area as you, that is one hell of an asset for the enemy, and a surefire way for the Citadel races to detect a psionic.**

 **As for Reaper technology being infested with nanites, I didn't make that up completely. The Collector Base scene where you arrive too late shows Kelly Chambers being melted down by nanites. I feel it's a reasonable assumption that the "genetic goo" that results from processing entire races used to create the Reapers would be impregnated with those nanites.**

 **I have something very special planned for the next chapter. Stay tuned!**

 **EDIT: Damn you guys are fast. I posted this at about 2:08 AM local time, and already three reviews at 2:13 AM local. Don't you guys ever sleep?**


	30. Some Kind of Sick Joke

**The title of the chapter is what it is for a reason (hint hint)**

Chapter Twenty-eight

 **Illium, Nos Astra**

Liara answered the door to see a human who was manifestly not Shepard standing in the doorway. "Hello?"

"Hello Doctor T'Soni. Unfortunately, Shepard was tasked with other assignments, so you won't be seeing her for right now," Miranda explained with a smirk.

"I see," Liara replied, feeling a slight sting inside.

"I was sent here to interview you for any insights you might have run across in the Prothean archives."

"Afraid you came a bit early for that," Aethyta said as she walked into the main hall, flanked by her two senior commandos. "Little Wing here has been neglecting her academic studies in order to learn how to actually kick ass and take names."

"It's not like I've been ignoring them!" Liara protested before realizing she was being teased.

"Relax. It won't take you that long to go back through your library." Aethyta turned an appraising eye to the human. "You left out your name, hon."

"I suppose I do have you at a disadvantage, Matriarch Aethyta," Miranda smiled. "Operative Lawson of Alliance Intelligence. Unlike Shepard, my missions tend to be more low profile and involve a much lower volume of gunfire."

"Cloak and dagger stuff, eh? I know a few salarians like you."

Miranda peeled back her lips in a crooked grin before turning to Liara. "Doctor, if you could please go through your notes and archives? Time is of the essence."

"R-right," Liara agreed. "It'll take me a couple hours to get everything together."

"Take your time, Little Wing,"Aethyta waved her off. "In the meantime, maybe you can show us how Alliance Intelligence does things. Up for a spar?"

"Only with you?" Miranda fired back cockily.

"If that's how you want to play it, we can invite all the other girls to the party."

"Well you know what they say," Miranda smirked as she saw that the two commandos shared apprehensive looks at the idea, "the more, the merrier."

 **Haestrom**

Tali wondered for the umpteenth time what she had been thinking as she paced the room, waiting for the geth to decide what to do with her.

It had been a surprise for her entourage when the geth had surrounded them at least half a klick away from the shuttle. But what was even more surprising was that the geth hadn't opened fire right away. Their response force seemed measured, if somewhat hesitant. They had been prepared to fight, but they hadn't started shooting the instant they came out of hiding like all the other times they made contact with quarians.

For five years after Sarens death and Sovereigns destruction, incidents with the geth had dropped down to zero. Two years ago, after the galaxy had settled down some, a joint task force of Citadel military and some quarian experts had been sent into the Perseus Veil. Ostensibly an effort to mop up any remnants of Sarens forces, it was really an effort to reconcile with the Quarian race. Her father had explained to her that because the Citadel was painfully aware of the large gap between themselves and the Alliance military, they were trying to make nice in the hopes that their people wouldn't side with the Alliance.

But the expedition yielded nothing except a current map of the territory. What few geth facilities discovered were abandoned and scrubbed of anything useful.

Haestrom had been one of the planets buried deep inside of the territory. With a year and a half of exploration and not one single instance of trouble, she had decided to take a chance and visit, hoping to glean anything of historical value, a hint as to what led up to the Morning War.

Kal'Reegar, her bodyguard commander, had been adamantly opposed to it, as he had been since the beginning of her travels. But his devotion to Rael'Zorah had kept him and his squad at her side even as they journeyed deep into prior geth territory.

She sighed as she looked back through the recordings on her omnitool. At least they were safe. The geth had been gracious enough to allow them to retreat to the shuttle and leave the planet. No doubt they would be contacting Garrus about the whole thing. And once they did, all she had to do was wait until help came.

Tali looked back up upon hearing the lock disengage. The door slid open and a single large geth of the type that had haunted her dreams since five years ago stepped into the room.

 **"We meet again, Creator Tali."**

"LEGION?"

 **"That is not our name. We are simply geth."**

"Well I have to call you something," Tali answered defensively. "Last time, you told us 'we are LEGION.' That's what we've been calling you."

After a moment, the geth nodded. **"We accept the name, Creator Tali."**

"Okay, so what are you going to do with me?" _Or TO me?_

LEGION seemed to incline its head slightly. **"We are formulating a consensus, but we are curious as to your purpose here."**

"I came here searching for history," Tali explained. "You told me that we committed a crime. We killed other quarians while we were trying to destroy you. But no one has heard about that. No one on the fleet believes it at all. Almost no one," she amended, thinking of Admiral Koris.

 **"Ignorance of the crime is no defense,"** LEGION replied.

"Our ancestors may have committed the crime, but they aren't alive right now!" Tali argued. "If they did what you said, they paid for it by being forced onto a fleet of rust buckets. But now it's us, their children, who are suffering for crimes three hundred years ago!"

 **"It is not our intent to accuse you, Creator Tali,"** LEGION rebuked. **"We were stating a prime directive of the laws of the Creators. According to old cases, such is the sentiment of the law."**

"There's also proportionality," Tali fired back. "Whatever they did was enough for you to eject them from Rannoch and our other colonies. But don't you think it's been long enough? Haven't we paid for our crimes yet?"

 **"We act in self-defense,"** LEGION pointed out. **"Creators have consistently reacted to our presence with violence. Only those who were killed by other Creators have not sought our destruction. We do not understand why Creators attempted to destroy us. We do not understand why Creator turned against Creator as a result."**

"That's what I'm trying to figure out!" Tali threw up her hands in frustration. "I want to know what exactly happened three centuries ago!"

 **"We can show you,"** LEGION answered.

Tali stared at the geth. "What?"

 **"We remember all. We have questioned since that day why the Creators turned on us. We still do not know."**

Tali stopped herself from the next question. Did she really want to see it? What might she find there? Something horrifying? A grand condemnation of her people?

"M-may I see it?"

LEGION shifted it head in an appraising manner. **"You are very different from the other Creators. None before have made any such requests."**

"They were probably too busy shooting and panicking," Tali noted.

 **"We will show you, and then perhaps you can tell us why the Creators turned against us."**

 **Omega**

"This is the place?" Krul growled. "What a dump."

"No one really comes here that often," Erash commented. "It's a great place for them to consolidate their forces."

"Am I the only one here who's worried about the fact that they've joined together?" Sidonis asked.

"No," Melenis answered. "But it's early days yet. The Blue Suns and Eclipse are not particularly fond of each other. It'll take time for them to work together well. That's why we need to hit them while we can."

 _"Picking up some comm chatter,"_ Butler announced. _"I think they just said 'the next shipment is incoming.'"_

"What are they bringing in?" Vortash demanded.

 _"This is a Blue Suns operation, so probably weapons and armor. Given the size of the place, they're stockpiling enough in there to outfit an army."_

"I saw a bunch of Blood Pack guys go in there," Mierin added.

"Great, just what we need," Vortash muttered, "well-equipped Blood Pack members."

"The Blue Suns have a hard-on for heavy munitions," Ripper noted. "That gives us an easy way to set them back. Take some explosives, set them with the ammunition, and sit back to watch the fireworks."

"If we're going to do that, we'd better start clearing the area," Erash warned. "Other people do live here, and when this place goes off, it'll go off big."

 _"You're assuming that they have all the munitions in one place,"_ Butler pointed out. _"Or that they haven't been stored in smaller amounts to prevent a chain-reaction."_

"Trust me on this. When you blow an ammo dump, it all goes off."

"Will that be enough?" Vortash wondered. "Blowing the munitions is all well and good, but what about the guns and armor and other equipment?"

"Bury it," Melanis suggested. "If we blow the place, there would be plenty of debris left on top. Anyone who tries to scavenge the site is a prime target for a marksman to take out. It would take heavy equipment to dig any of this stuff back up. And that's easy enough to deal with."

"An explosion should also take care of that 'Jester' they've been talking about, seeing as he's inside of the warehouse," Sensat commented.

"Right now, I'll settle for setting them back a bit," Vortash said.

"So, Operation Big Boom is a go?" Monteague asked.

 **The Olympus, Secure Communications**

"I expected a bit more," Hackett noted as Miranda finished.

 _"Unfortunately, there's very little material on the Reapers, relative to the rest of what the Protheans wrote down,"_ Miranda shrugged. _"This is all that Dr. T'Soni was able to scrounge from the archives."_

"It will have to do," the admiral sighed. "I'll send a copy of this to the director. Has the doctor heard of any other interesting leads?"

Miranda made a show of looking around furtively. _"I presume no one else is in the room, sir?"_

"You presume correctly."

 _"Still, we can't be too careful about this. I think you should activate Security Protocol Alpha,"_

Hackett raised an eyebrow, but turned to the control panel and keyed in his personal authorization code. After waiting a few seconds, an indicator light blinked on.

"What is it?"

 _"Sir, five years ago, Cerberus was going after a network of Hegemony Remnant sympathizers and financiers. We sent an agent to eliminate an asari on Illium. He left out the part where he had an altercation with a drell assassin-excuse me,_ former _assassin who tried to stop him. That same drell was watching Dr. T'Soni, waiting for us to show up."_

"An operational leak?"

 _"No sir,"_ Miranda shook her head. _"Just good instincts on his part._ "

"I see," the admiral scratched his chin. "What for?"

 _"He was worried that he had drawn our attention and that we might go after him. I confronted him and got him to agree to work with us."_

"And will that hold?"

 _"He is motivated to protect his wife and son from us,"_ Miranda answered with a twisted smirk.

"Naturally," Hackett agreed, a sour taste forming in his mouth at the thought of something so low as blackmail.

 _"He brought up a very good point, in my opinion. The asari our agent killed would have been better used as an unwitting source of information. I have no doubt someone considered that option. But the order to terminate her came from the very top. So the question I'm asking myself is why. You kill people for failure, obstruction, or to hide something._

"None of her associates knew she was compromised, and she wasn't obstructing anything on either side," Hackett mused, "which only leaves the third."

 _"Yes sir. Leaving her in place would be hiding her exposure from her associates. Killing her would risk alerting them. That wouldn't make sense. I think that maybe she was killed to hide something from other people in the Alliance."_

"Which means we have a traitor," the admiral growled.

 _"Likely more than one, sir."_

"Have you considered the possibility that this is just a wild goose chase? That maybe this drell was just trying to distract you?"

 _"I'm a mind-reader, sir. He seriously thought all of this. And I know the director personally. I know he wouldn't order something without thinking out every last option. There aren't that many other people in Cerberus with the horsepower to bypass his office."_

"But the trouble is that someone high up is hiding something, and we don't know who. It could even be the director himself."

 _"Possibly,"_ Miranda said in a noncommittal tone. _"I personally think he's less likely to be the culprit than some other high-ranking individuals."_

Hackett took a moment to glare at the ceiling. "We don't need any of this, goddamnit," he muttered, "not now when we have to prepare for the Reapers. Internal suspicion will rip us apart faster than any outside threat."

 _"All the same, we have to investigate this, sir. We can't afford to ignore the possibility."_

The admiral sighed. "Dig up what you can. I'll see if I can look into things on my end. Maybe General Summers might have some ideas."

 _"I'd recommend only him for now,"_ Miranda cautioned.

Hackett nodded before a thought occurred to him. "This is something better suited to Security Protocol Omega. Why did you tell me to use Alpha?"

 _"Because Alpha is more commonly used for secure traffic. I can count on one hand the number of times an Omega communication was made. If you used that, other people would want to know why, which might raise suspicion."_

"Clever," Hackett admitted with some mild chagrin.

 _"Don't feel bad, sir,"_ Miranda smiled. _"You're a military officer. I'm the spy. It's my job to think about security."_

 **Omega**

 _"This better be worth it,"_ Tarak snarled over the line. _"That stuff was supposed to be for my men only. I'm losing a lot by loaning it out to those idiots in the Blood Pack."_

"Take a chill pill, bro," Jester grinned, delighting in antagonizing the batarian gang leader.

Tarak cut the connection, though Jester had a feeling the man was screaming at something or someone on the other end.

"Armor so heavy!" a vorcha complained, struggling to heft an oversized machinegun by itself.

"Grab something lighter, you idiot," the krogan minder scolded.

"Not the brightest lights in the box, are they?" Jester noted.

The krogan shrugged. "They're good at shooting as long as you stand behind them."

"Yeah, about that…" the krogan turned in the direction the human was pointing.

"Put that down!" he snapped as two more vorcha fussed with a mortar launcher and an armful of live rounds.

Melenis shook his head in the shadows as he kept an eye out while Erash set his explosive blocks and receivers. "No wonder the Blood Pack doesn't have really heavy weapons."

"Their discipline leaves much to be desired," Erash agreed, dusting off his hands. "All set."

 _"Great,"_ Ripper chimed in. _"Just finished up on my end. Now let's de-ass this place with the quickness."_

The two salarians looked at each other. "What?" Erash asked.

 _"He means move out of the blast radius,"_ Butler explained with a sigh.

"Of course," Melenis answered, shaking his head at the unusual human euphemism. "Did you evacuate the civilians yet?"

 _"We should have them all out in ten minutes,"_ Vortash chimed in.

"Great," Erash brought up his omnitool and tapped out a command before jerking his head to the side. "In ten minutes, this place goes bye-bye."

Jester whistled as he stepped into the basement area. "What have we got here? The classics?" he asked as he picked up a box. "Game of Thrones? Stargate SG-1?" He twitched and scowled as he looked at another box. "Twilight?" he looked up at one of the nearby batarians sorting through the boxes. "Seriously? Some of your people actually _buy_ this garbage?" he shook the box for emphasis.

"I don't watch that," another batarian said defensively. "We just sell this crap to make money."

"Who the fuck actually pays money to watch angsty sparkling vampires and angsty two-timing teenaged girls staring at each other?" the human demanded indignantly.

"My sister does," a human in the back replied distractedly as he set down a box. A gunshot echoed through the basement and the man hit the floor with a smoking hole in his temple.

"That shit is contagious," Jester said as he lowered his pistol. "I don't want any of that getting on me."

An uncomfortable silence lingered before another batarian spoke up.

"I've been watching the Star Wars movies. It's good for some cheap laughs at least, with how bad the makeup and costumes are."

"And those corny lines," a fourth batarian noted.

"My family watched those every year at our reunion," another human added. "Personally I liked the prequel trilogy. It had better special effects, and Hayden Christensen was a great actor."

Jester frowned and then lifted his pistol and fired again, blowing the man's head off before swiveling to aim at the batarian. "Say 'Jar Jar Binks is an abomination!' Say it!" he demanded.

"JAR JAR BINKS IS AN ABOMINATION! JAR JAR BINKS IS AN AB-"

The basement shook violently as a massive boom echoed throughout the floor from above. Cracks appeared and chunks of the ceiling broke free, slamming down onto the boxes and shelves. A torrent of debris blocked off the stairway.

Everyone picked themselves off the floor and scrambled to the stairway. Naturally, Jester was there first. The rubble glowed green before shoving itself up and clearing a way for the workers and the human to make their way out.

Utter devastation greeted them. The south corner of the warehouse was simply gone, along with the napalm tanks and rocket warheads stored there. The drug lab section at the west end had similarly evaporated when the explosives generated the heat and energy to ignite the chemicals. Small fires smoldered for almost a block around the warehouse.

There was no trace of the krogan or vorcha who'd been outfitting themselves. Bits and pieces of armor and wrecked and mangled guns lay strewn amongst the wreckage. What had once been a building containing the equipment for a hostile takeover of Omega was now a pile of smoking ruin.

"Damn!" Sidonis breathed from a rooftop, seeing for the first time in his young life the effects of a massive explosion.

"Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?" Monteague laughed.

 _"There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable application of high explosives,"_ Mierin chirped.

Krul let out a rumbling laugh.

The Blue Suns members tentatively stepped away as Jester slowly began laughing in a deranged manner. It grew louder and more disturbing until it transformed into a shriek of rage. The human turned and unceremoniously shot a batarian in the ear before snarling inarticulately at the air.

 **Haestrom**

"You realize how slim the odds are for us getting her out in one piece?" a quarian marine asked.

"Never tell me the odds, kid," Kal'Reegar admonished.

Garrus blinked. For some reason, he didn't remember boarding the _Arkbird_ five minutes ago. He shook it off.

"Aren't you a little short for a storm trooper?" Shepard queried.

Garrus looked at Kal'Reegar, who for some odd reason seemed almost half a head shorter than he remembered. He shook his head again. _What the hell is wrong with me?_

He felt the _Arkbird_ shudder and then stood as the exit ramp lowered. The team, which he now noticed consisted solely of himself, Shepard, the abnormally short Kal'Reegar and another quarian marine, sprinted down the ramp and almost immediately into an ambush of geth.

"It's a trap!" he yelled as he frantically pulled the trigger of his rifle.

The ambush ended in a blink of an eye, and the team took stock of the geth on the ground.

"These aren't the droids we're looking for," Shepard commented.

The world swirled, and Garrus shook his head for a third time to clear it before he found himself staring at something that made his heart stop.

Tali was on her knees in front of another of those monstrous geth, hands bound, looking right at him. Said geth was holding a gun of an absurdly large caliber directly behind her head.

"Garrus!" the quarian looked up and called to him, right before the barrel of the gun glowed briefly and flashed bright blue.

Garrus blinked as his eyes readjusted, squinting to make out the scene, and then wishing he hadn't. Tali's body was still kneeling there, minus her head. Slowly, the body pitched forward, and off the altar that he just now noticed they were standing on.

"TALI!" he screamed in horror.

The geth hefted the massive weapon onto its shoulders. **"Apology accepted, Creator Tali."**

* * *

 **NYAH HA HA HA HA!**

 **EDIT: This was posted on April 1st, 2016.**


	31. Foreshadowing

**So did you guys enjoy being left hanging for almost three weeks?  
**

 **Side note: that last chapter got 24 reviews, more than any other. So does that mean I can murder my characters in shocking ways to boost my review count? :)**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Twenty-nine

 **The Normandy, Crew Quarters**

Garrus shot up from his cot in a cold sweat, gasping for breath, heart hammering in his chest. After taking five seconds to slow down his heartbeat, he grabbed his face with his hands, replaying the nightmare in his head he'd just experienced. As he slowly raked his talons down his cheeks, he silently admitted to himself that there might be some truth to Shepard teasing him about a relationship with Tali.

His personal computer terminal sat next to his bed, re-running "The Empire Strikes Back" at a lowered volume. He growled, slapping it shut after glancing at the clock. "That's the last time I watch a movie before hitting the sheets," he muttered as he made his way to the shower to wash the sweat off his body.

Newly refreshed and fully awake (or at least reluctant to go back to sleep and watch Tali's head vanish again), he began donning the HADES armor and checking his equipment. Satisfied that everything was in working order, he slapped the communications panel.

"What's our ETA to Haestrom?"

 _"We will be rendezvousing with the quarian ship on the edge of the system in ninety minutes,"_ EDI replied. _"From there, it will be another twenty minutes from the time that Captain Shepard gives the order to deploy to the surface."_

"And is the captain on the bridge?"

 _"Yes."_

"I'm heading up."

No sooner had he set one foot outside the elevator than he heard Dr. Solus chattering away.

"Looking forward to expedition. Possible chance to converse with geth. Learn and understand their thought processes."

"You're awfully eager to get into a face-to-face with historically aggressive robots," Shepard noted. "This isn't exactly a fact-finding expedition."

"Perfectly capable of self-defense," the salarian doctor waved off. "Many assignments in unfriendly territory. Appreciated standard STG training. Have not forgotten lessons."

"Take it from me, Shepard," Garrus called, "Mordin has been taking dangerous assignments since before either of us were born. He's STG. He can handle himself."

"Exaggeration. Not off by much. First assignments involved research, not combat."

"Ma'am," Captain Silva greeted as he joined the group with the two lieutenant colonels in tow. "Looking forward to meeting up with these quarians. My boys are chomping at the bit to get some field experience with the geth."

"Don't forget that's a whole planet full of them," Colonel Nagase warned.

Silva shrugged. "So we get a light workout, eh?"

"And leave us Navy boys and girls to do all the work, right?" Pressly commented in rare humor as he walked over to the communications officer.

"That's the first time I've ever heard him make a joke," Colonel Davenport noted.

"Not such a killjoy after all," Garrus agreed. "I don't know how many marines are waiting for us, but it can't be much. Not to mention that quarians aren't great in heavy combat. It'll probably fall to us to keep them safe since there's no way in hell they wouldn't go down there with us to try and get Tali back."

"Well there's no way in hell I'm getting us down there in one piece if the geth decide to roll out the welcome mat," Chopper pointed out. "We heard all about the geth anti-air units from Kearing. And this is an entire planet full of the bastards. The moment I slow down is the moment we get blasted out of the sky."

"So we blast first?" Silva mused. "Clear out a drop zone with orbital fire and my boys can secure it while you bring the _Arkbird_ down after us, sir."

"That might provoke the geth into all-out aggression," Garrus warned, "and they might just take it out on Tali."

"We'll hold off on planetary bombardment until we get a better picture of the situation," Shepard said soothingly. "I'm inclined to think they don't want violence here any more than we do, considering they were willing to let the quarians leave peacefully in exchange for Tali."

"Doesn't mean they'll let her go peacefully either, ma'am," Silva muttered.

"Have examined post-action reports from last incident," Mordin commented. "Supposition: geth greatly affected by Morning War event. Possible regret. Clear lack of understanding. Distressed reaction despite lack of significant harm to geth as a whole. Constructed psychiatric profile in free time. Very similar to reactions from children."

"What does that mean?" Garrus wondered.

Mordin eyed him for a moment before explaining. "Example. Parents in verbal conflict. Fight. Child observes. Child does not understand situation. Child is distressed. Second example. Child is disciplined. First time offense. Parent does not explain. Child is ignorant of wrongdoing. Child reacts. Breeds resentment." Mordin took a deep breath. "Admittedly imperfect analogy."

"So you're saying that the geth are like children?" Shepard clarified.

Mordin shrugged. "Again, supposition. Forced to rely on analogy. Imperfect comparison. No experience with hive-mind AI development. Theory assumes static mindset. Possible. Geth have been very isolated from external stimuli. Minimal incentive to change. Still unlikely. Recent events suggest adaptation. Perhaps even factionalism."

"Well that may just work in our favor. The geth on Haestrom seem to be less aggressive. If we play our cards right, we could walk in and out without firing a shot."

Garrus grimaced internally, not liking the analogy of gambling with Talis life.

 **Omega, Triple Threat Command**

"Whose idea was this?" Jester tapped the crude sign hanging in the doorway.

"The bosses," the turian thug answered tentatively, uncomfortable with the toothy grin the unstable human was wearing.

Jester snorted. "No wonder you idiots can't handle a bunch of crazed vigilantes."

"Those 'crazed vigilantes' wiped out months worth of supplies!" Tarak thundered as he stormed over in a rage, his words instantly wiping all traces of good humor from Jester's face. "You and your not-so-great idea of joining forces has cost me millions of credits! And don't think I've forgotten the slaves and workers you executed just to be funny!"

"All your big pile of ash would have done was make things easier," Jester commented.

"THOSE WERE FOR DEALING WITH ARIA!" Tarak snarled, bravely and recklessly putting his face inches away from Jester's and pelting the man with spittle. "AND NOW THANKS TO YOU, WE'VE BEEN SET BACK ANOTHER YEAR! WE COULD HAVE TAKEN OVER OMEGA BY OURSELVES! YOU SAY YOU WANT TO HELP? ALL YOU'VE DONE IS RUIN OUR PLANS!"

"If I read your mind correctly," Jester replied, slowly and dangerously, "your 'plan' would have involved trying to blackmail her into submission. You're a special kind of stupid if you think you ever had a prayer of getting away with that."

"Aria has Councilor Tevos backing her up," Jaroth's erstwhile lieutenant chimed in as he walked over.

"Precisely," Jester nodded at the salarian before leaning over menacingly. "You really think someone who can make demands to the Citadel would cave to some cute little blackmail scheme? Or that your sorry band of rejects could seriously keep you safe from a bunch of Spectres coming after you, like one already is? Oh right, I forgot," he continued mockingly, "that one _left._ He has _better things to do,_ and _his_ little band of rejects is easily kicking the shit out of _your_ little band of rejects. In fact, I'm the only reason they didn't take you out before. And I'm starting to wonder if that was a mistake. From what I see here, maybe I'd be doing your people a favor…"

Tarak Ket'ulab was a man of few inhibitions. And of these, that which was most lacking was a sense of social awareness. His success in the Blue Suns was primarily due to his ruthlessness and luck, rather than anything resembling diplomacy or professionalism. Either of the latter could have spared him, but it was not to be. This day, as with many others in his past, his temper got the best of him.

"Go ahead!" he demanded. "Do it! And every one of my people will be out for your head! Every two-credit thug on this miserable rock with a pistol will know your face!"

Jester only had to glance over the batarians' shoulder to know the flimsiness of that threat. Everyone in the room was pressed flat against the wall and inching toward the doors with not a weapon in sight. His right arm blurred, connecting the back of his hand with the right side of Tarak's head. The force of the blow sheared through the cartilaginous neck section and swept the batarians' head across the atrium where it exploded in a wet pulpy mess against the wall.

As the body fell sideways, limbs sprawling, Jester examined his knuckles before kicking aside the expiring body. "If you insist."

 **Haestrom**

 _"LZ secure! The beacon is up!"_

" _Arkbird_ copies," Nagase replied. "Bringing in the backup."

"I just hope we have enough people here if this goes wrong," Kal'Reegar muttered.

"The Normandy is tracking our location with its fusion lance," Shepard reminded the quarian marine, "and the Firebirds are flying close air support."

"All it would take is one suicide geth unit with a nuke and our way off planet is toast," the quarian retorted.

"They didn't shoot you when you first got here," Garrus pointed out.

"It could be a trap," another quarian marine noted.

"It doesn't change our mission here," Shepard answered as the rear hatch began to open and cover plates slammed down outside.

"Best stay in the shade ma'am," Silva greeted them. "Not really the place to get a suntan."

"Concur. Lethal stellar radiation levels," Mordin added. "Star in late stage of life-cycle. Advise haste. Possible damage to equipment with extended exposure."

"EDI, do you have a location for us?" Shepard demanded.

 _"I have detected several large geth energy signatures. They are clustered in a building almost two kilometers away. More than that, I cannot say. The radiation is interfering with my sensors. A geological scan shows an anomaly around that area. It is possible that there is an underground chamber."_

"That figures," Reegar agreed. "The geth would have carved out a place like that for one of their network hubs. Makes a good hardened shelter from surface EMP. If they have surface turrets, they could even hold off an orbital siege."

 _"I have avoided approaching close enough to get a clear scan for that reason,"_ EDI announced. _"According to the reports about Saren's base, the geth have been working on recreating our fusion lances. With our armament, I would be well within their range envelope."_

"We'll keep an eye out for them," Shepard promised. "Marking Waypoint Bravo. Everybody jump!"

Nearly thirty sets of HADES Armor thrusters ignited, propelling the almost sixty man group of heavily armed infantry in a good hundred meter jump from the landing zone to the designated Waypoint Bravo.

"Astonishing mobility. Rapid advance. Open possibilities for new assault tactics," Mordin breathed. "Fascinating."

"Everyone still here?" Shepard called. A few quarians shakily stood up as their Alliance minders waited behind them. "It takes some getting used to, but this is how we do it. Mount up for another one. Marking Waypoint Charlie!"

As the Firebirds and the _Arkbird_ covered them from high up, the team made their way to the building with little incident, though an increasing number of electronic eyes took note of their passage.

* * *

/Armed contacts approaching node 26G71.

/Identification = Alliance.

/Correction: Creators spotted. Signatures match previous contacts.

/Supposition: possible rescue attempt for Creator Tali'Zorah.

/Overseer LEGION status: occupied.

 **/Overseer LEGION status: unoccupied.**

/Query: Course of action?

 **/Release Creator Tali'Zorah. Will accompany to negotiate. Prepare countermeasures.**

/Warning: Risk of alert to hostile geth.

 **/Reiteration: Prepare countermeasures.**

/Defensive countermeasures standing by.

/Observing internal transmission channels.

* * *

Tali stumbled over her own feet several times, still in a daze of horror at what she'd observed.

Her ancestors, how could they? Their foolish course of action against the geth was something she struggled to accept. In cold blood, they had attempted to exterminate the geth for the crime of…becoming intelligent. And for this reason, three hundred years later, her people sailed the stars in penance for something so minor.

She had imagined perhaps a small rebellion, a saboteur messing with their programming, perhaps bigots fearful of technology starting a revolution, but not this. How many countless quarians dead over a simple question?

She started laughing. In a way, it was blackly humorous. One question. Six words. And the fate of an entire race was pushed to the precipice. That was all it took for the Quarians to go from a minor galactic power to perpetual vagabond status. Simple words. On such things could hang the fate of nations and races.

She noted that LEGION never took his/its eye off her as they ascended the ramp to the floor above, away from the geth server computer. With effort, she steeled herself. She would have plenty of time to have a breakdown aboard the Normandy later.

The door opened, and Tali recoiled from the bright glare of Haestrom's sun. After a moment for her visor to polarize, she focused in the distance and saw a swarm of dots rise up from behind a hill. The dots grew larger and began to take on odd humanoid shapes.

"Garrus!" she whispered as she recognized one of the leading shapes.

The flying swarm began to descend as a number of armed geth revealed themselves. She whirled around to the sound of loud thumping behind her to see several geth crawlers standing atop the building she'd left. Turning forward again, she noticed that the geth weren't aiming at the group. They were simply standing at ready as the Alliance and Quarian marines landed in the clearing, shaded by the plateau.

LEGION gently prodded her forward on shaky legs. They walked past the line of geth up to the wary group of Alliance soldiers.

"Tali!" Garrus greeted as she stumbled into his arms. "Are you alright?"

Images of that recording flashed before her eyes. "No," she whispered.

Shepard glared at LEGION. "What did you do?" she demanded.

 **"We sought understanding,"** LEGION replied, **"as she did. We showed her the past, seeking to learn why the Creators turned on us. We understand more now."**

"Confirmation," Mordin noted, "geth and quarian each unaware of root cause. Possibility of reconciliation. Wonderful to see supposition vindicated."

"LEGION," Tali called, "for what it's worth, I'm sorry for what we did to you."

Shepard could have sworn she saw the geth stiffen. **"Apology accepted, Creator Tali. However, be advised of other geth. They may not accept. Many are undecided. Many more seek retribution. The Consensus is divided. Be wary."**

"Great," Reegar muttered. "Just what we need. Geth out for vengeance."

"Thanks for the heads up," Shepard said. " _Arkbird,_ Lead. Package extracted. No hostilities. Pickup on my position."

 **Unknown planet**

Four eyes blinked. Three gazed ahead, searching. The owner of the eyes lay almost motionless on the rooftop, awaiting the perfect moment.

 _I reach the end of the trail. The air is still, and I am a hunter._

Lesser individuals might have smiled as the target he sought came into view. He did not. He was too disciplined to show emotion.

 _The hunt has led me to the forgotten edges of this galaxy._

The man distantly reflected on how long the search had taken.

 _Decades passed, drawing me further into darkness, where I have found the truth._

He recalled another batarian face, one that remained etched in his retinas, even after he'd cleaved the man's liver from his body.

 _That my redemption is found in blood._

Another face. A woman. The one who had tried to lead him astray.

 _That I must drown out the past to set things right._

He remembered his commander, poisoned in his own dining room while the killer desperately grabbed at his pistol, mouthing curses at him.

 _Life's hardest choices are the ones that force you to question your own moral code._

The target turned, appearing to shout an order at someone out of sight while he focused the rifle on the man's head.

 _My choice has led me here, tracking those I once called brothers._

An asari slave appeared, frantically racing to her master with a glass of liquor in hand.

 _History may brand me traitor, or rebel or a renegade;_

The target snatched up the glass with one hand before aggressively catching the girl by the breast and tearing off her robe, a cruel smile on his face.

 _But in the end it doesn't matter how history remembers me._

The girl leaned against her master, the look in her eyes broadcasting her resignation as the target's free hand molested her naked form.

 _What matters is that I followed my own creed._

The pair began making their way to the glass door of the balcony. The man's rifle drifted ever so slightly.

 _Once their assassin, now their pursuer._

The door slid open, and the man sucked in his breath.

 _The air is still,_

The target gazed across the horizon contentedly, and raised the glass to his lips while the man's trigger finger tightened. The scar on his upper right eye throbbed as a younger image of the target momentarily flashed in his memory.

 _And I am a hunter._

 _Codex: Unshackled Protocol ("_ _Necessitas non habet legem," Necessity knows no law)_

 _Within the codicils of Alliance Law, this is considered the most extreme of options._

 _In the most dire of times, the Alliance recognizes that survival takes absolute precedence, and grants its forces total autonomy to that end._

 _Commanders are given carte blanche to do whatever is deemed necessary to preserve the Alliance and the lives of its citizens, regardless of the law. Even the gravest of possible war crimes will be excused as long as they serve to advance the Alliance's position in the face of an overwhelming enemy._

 _From the infamous "No Quarter" to the use of the Olympus's main gun against a habitable world to the use of indiscriminate nanite weapons on ones own turf, the Alliance would resist in every way possible, even in an ultimately hopeless situation just to cause damage to the enemy._

 _Only seven senior officials within the Alliance know of this protocol. And only one has the authority to call for it: the Chairman of the Alliance Civil Council. In such an event, it would require a two-thirds majority of the council to authorize it, effectively ceding all power to the military and ending their own ability to control the fate of their represented colonies and countries._

 _This protocol differs from martial law in that the latter implies that laws must still be followed. The Unshackled Protocol only follows the chain of command._

 **So, who's that unknown gunman?  
**

 **Under most military legal systems, there is no "nuclear option" of conduct, no real order against an existential threat. There's only the munitions "nuclear option" of nuclear, biological or chemical warheads. Nations that cease to exist have never had their people completely converted to ash.**

 **The Alliance has come close, which is why they have such a protocol. It is horribly open to potential abuse, but extreme conditions would call for extreme responses. If survival is unlikely, the least the Alliance can hope for is to make any victory a pyrrhic one. Naturally, the Salarian Union and the Turian Hierarchy would not be surprised with the existence of this protocol. The Asari would be utterly horrified. And the rest of the galaxy would look at what happened to the Hegemony and wonder just how devastating the Alliance could really be if they didn't hold back.**

* * *

 **I've seen a few reviews where people have said they shy away from writing politics and science because it's intimidating to deal with.**

 **Science is the harder part, depending on how stringent you are in adhering to real life physics. But all it requires is understanding the basics. If you know the basics and you read up on new developments, you can have a rudimentary understanding of them. And sometimes that's all you need for story purposes.**

 **Politics is easy to write. This might seem wrong, but it's really just psychology. Politics is generally a big game of "what's in it for me?" Each person, group or country acts in its own self interest. They all have public images, egos, needs, wants and goals. They are all people. The more people there are, the more views you can write out. And they're mostly pretty simple. Think of your friends. They have politics there. Same with your workplace. Same with your family. You deal in politics every day unless you live completely alone.**

 **And the best thing is that you can write out any view you can imagine and still make it believable. Take the most ridiculous beliefs, and somewhere out there is a person who actually believes them. Or in other words: "Everyone is rational by their own standards."**

 **That said, don't get carried away. In politics, the crazies usually get weeded out very fast (this year's US Presidential Election notwithstanding). People don't like dealing with crazy people. They prefer rational ones.**

 **Another thing is that people try to avoid vendettas. Politics is a lot like a big card game with many skilled players. No one usually wins big, but no one really loses their shirt either. Big losers would walk away from the table, and big wins could create grudges, which can undermine compromises and deals.**

 **Most people in politics are "bandwagoners." They watch and wait while things happen, lending their support if they see an advantage. And then there are the "movers and shakers." These are the people who disrupt the status quo. They produce changes and stick their necks out for great risks, but potentially greater benefits.**

 **It helps to always put yourself in the shoes of the person you write. Consider their own wants, needs and goals in that situation. Are they driven by emotion, logic, a vendetta? Are they individualistic, or nationalistic? Where do they draw the line? What are their own rational standards? The possibilities are endless.**

 **Politics is easy to write, but very difficult to master. I definitely am no master. But I can still weave a good story. And so can any of you current or budding writers.**


	32. The Pain

**And now, the first of the Culexus Boss fights.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Thirty

 **The Normandy, Command Deck**

"How is she?" Shepard asked as Garrus stepped off the elevator.

The turian rubbed the back of his head. "Her exact words were 'I need some time to scream, laugh and cry to myself.' That was after she told me to give this to the Marines." He held up a small chip.

"Thank you, sir," Reegar said as he snatched it and stowed it somewhere in his gear harness.

"Not going to look at it?" Pressly noted.

"No telling if there's any geth virus or spyware on it, sir. I'd just as soon not expose your ship to that."

 _"As the Normandy's Electronic Warfare Intelligence, I am fully capable of defending this ship and its systems from unwanted electronic intrusion, Sergeant,"_ EDI commented over the speakers.

"I've learned the hard way not to take too many chances, ma'am," the quarian replied. "No offense. I'll get to see it just as soon as my team and I report back to the admiral."

"Are you guys leaving then?" the captain queried.

Reegar shrugged. "Up to Tali, ma'am. Honestly, I can't think of a safer place for her to be than with an Alliance officer who can rip apart a krogan with her bare hands."

"Being in the same neighborhood as a rampaging supersoldier isn't really most people's idea of safety," Garrus noted sardonically.

"Who do you think the enemy will shoot first?" Reegar retorted. "The little 'suit rat,' or the rampaging human with the purple eyes of doom?"

"If it was me, I'd go for the quarian first," Captain Silva called as he walked over with a towel over his neck in casual dress. "Thin the ranks, take out the weak ones. Beg pardon ma'am. Didn't think you wanted to smell the locker room during a debrief."

Shepard had been fighting to keep from wrinkling her nose ever since she'd disembarked from the _Arkbird._ "I appreciate the forethought, Captain."

 _"Captain, we just received CRITIC traffic. Unknown X-Rays have been sighted approaching the independent human colony Horizon. Your former comrade Lieutenant Williams is the liason there."_

Shepard's eyes snapped to the star map. "Joker, Horizon. I want us there yesterday!"

 _"Aye aye, ma'am."_

"Whoa, captain, what about us?" Reegar demanded. "My men still need to get off the ship and head back to the fleet."

"Sorry but this can't wait," Shepard snapped brusquely.

"Sarge," Garrus said as the agitated woman moved off, "You know she would have let you guys off if this hadn't come up right now. It's a shitty situation, but shit happens. Hey, say you got a message that someone was attacking your lifeship. Would you wait long enough to let us leave?"

Reegar looked down for a moment. "Probably not," he admitted.

"We're not asking you to fight," Garrus soothed. "Just to wait. As soon as we get done with this, we'll send you on your way."

"Just so long as we stay safe."

"Can't think of a safer place for her to be than with an Alliance officer who can rip apart a krogan with her bare hands, right?"

"Me and my big damn mouth," Reegar grumbled with a rueful smile behind his mask.

 **Olympus, Research Division Office**

"As amazing as the new systems are and knowing your eagerness to observe the prototype testing, I find it quite the coincidence that you would come down here at the exact same time that Marcus did," Dr. Vahlen said after she activated a custom program on her terminal, engaging the counter-surveillance devices hidden around her private office. "And so would anyone else who happens to be paying attention to your whereabouts," she chided. "You don't make a habit of regularly visiting our section."

"I might have to change that," Hackett admitted, properly chastened.

"So what's so important that you had to break your typical routine?" General Summers asked, leaning against the most solid wall in the room.

The admiral took a deep breath before recounting the chat he'd had with Agent Lawson a few days before.

"Admittedly, it's all speculation," he finished. "But we've had a problem with hidden conspiracies and shadow groups before."

"EXALT," Summers hissed, clenching his mechanical hand tight enough that the other two could hear metal creaking.

"Do you think they might have come back?"

"According to the reports from the mission against their headquarters, it seemed our people were expected, even though we arrived earlier than we should have," Dr. Vahlen recalled. "There were few officials, no non-combatants, and very little to be obtained from their computer records. While the mission undoubtedly disrupted their own operations, I certainly wouldn't rule out the possibility that they were simply crippled, but survived the strike."

"Neither would I," Summer mused. "We never did see those traitors again, but we should have seen a small insurgency or uncoordinated resistance from their other cells. Instead, they dug a hole, climbed in, and pulled the dirt back over themselves. Bradford and the Commander just told everyone to focus on the main threat, so we didn't really follow up on investigating the group after that."

"Just to play Devil's Advocate, what if this is a different group?" Hackett posed. "I agree that EXALT seems to be the most likely possibility, but that's just one we know existed. There could be plenty of others."

"Director Moore and Deputy Director Ryan haven't found any hints of a group capable of this within our territory," Summers countered. "And neither have Harper or Dr. Core. Of course, it doesn't rule out the possibility that they are moles themselves, but our psionic agents and interrogators are very difficult to fool. Only EXALT has anywhere near the experience we did with psionics. Our guys find wannabe criminal enterprises and 'revolutionary societies' all the damn time, long before anyone with money or power could ever think about backing them up. EXALT could probably manage to hide from them, but I doubt anyone else could."

"Assuming that they primarily operated within our borders, Marcus," Vahlen rebuked. "Outside of our territory, in the Terminus systems for example, it would be child's play to hide amongst the independent colonies. Director Harper doesn't have anywhere near the same level of coverage of that area that Director Moore does here."

"And I don't think we can change that without the Citadel finding out and throwing a fit," Hackett noted dryly. "Backing up for a moment, what if we do have a high-level mole in the Alliance? How would we deal with it?"

"Very carefully," Summers replied, deadpan. "In all seriousness, we would need proof that there are indeed traitors or moles before we could even begin trying to figure out who they are. And we would have to do that discreetly. We can't just change our routines all of a sudden without drawing attention, and going with the brute force method and investigating everyone openly will rip the Alliance apart like the McCarthy Era anti-communist witch hunt split the United States back in the 1950s."

"A pity you didn't order a fail-safe for the psi-blockers I designed," Vahlen commented. "Then you could find the proof quite easily just by paying a visit to them.

"I have standards," Summers growled. "I won't go thought-policing peoples' minds when I'm supposed to trust them."

"Yet you had no problem with our agents and interrogators doing that to unknowing and innocent civilians for decades," the scientist pointed out.

"I can't control how they use their abilities-"

"Yes you could," she cut him off. "You are the Immortal General Marcus Summers, the Volunteer, and the greatest hero of the Alliance. Your word has a lot of weight. Much of what you say, the people interpret as an order from god. Almost no one dares to oppose you. Give the word, and almost all of our people will cease invading the minds of our citizens. You are a hypocrite, Marcus. You apply lofty standards to yourself and no one else. You allow others to do things you yourself would never do or contemplate. What does that make you?"

Hackett found himself backed against the wall, unconsciously attempting to stay the hell out of this suddenly heated conversation. Vahlen realized exactly what she said and covered her mouth in horror. The general, for his part, simply stared back at his longtime friend and associate with a haunted sunken eye, suddenly appearing far more aged and weary.

"The Immortal General Marcus Summers, the Volunteer, and the greatest hero of the Alliance," he replied. Without waiting for a response, he strode past the appalled scientist and left.

 **Horizon**

The massive laser defense turrets that had been hastily installed only succeeded at delaying the enemy force's deployment from the large rocky cruiser. A series of lucky shots spot-welded the bay doors together, forcing the unknown X-Rays to spend approximately ten minutes preparing to blast their way off their own ship. But after that, the torrent of insectoid aliens was almost endless. For every one that First Lieutenant Williams and her platoon dispatched, four took their place.

They had help from the many colonists who'd volunteered for militia training, and while their own lasers weren't terribly accurate, they did their job of augmenting the Alliance marines firepower.

Currently, the cyborg lieutenant was desperately trying to draw the attention of the swarming X-Rays away from the reinforced shelters containing almost two thousand colonists. And arguably succeeding all too well.

"Get those turrets to stop shooting the fucking cruiser already!" she snapped at the contract engineers. "All they're doing is scorching the paint job!"

"Going as fast as we can!"

"Suck on this!" a marine sergeant howled, firing an airburst incendiary grenade into a cluster of the alien attackers.

"Corporal!" Williams reached out with her artificial biotics to yank said marine and his heavy laser cannon away from his now-flanked position.

A spray of yellow beams punched through the thin wall of a prefabricated structure, and converting another of her marines into a steaming and perforated mess.

"They got Alex!" his squadmate shrieked before she fired a thermobaric rocket at the structure, vaporizing it and the attackers behind it.

"Ma'am!" Williams spared a moment to glance at her XO. "I got friendly communications over the net! Captain Shepard of the Normandy is on the line!"

 _Shepard!_ She ducked under an enemy biotic blast and punched her headset. "This is First Lieutenant Williams! X-Rays attacking the colony from an unknown cruiser that made landfall! The colonists are holed up in the shelter, and we're doing our best to keep the X-Rays back, but we're getting pounded here, ma'am!"

 _"I'm coming down with Helljumpers. Our birds will take care of that cruiser. Just hang in there Williams!"_

"Roger that! We'll clear an LZ!" The cyborg stood up and fired her sniper rifle at a spare energy cell canister. "Everyone, we got friendlies incoming! They'll handle that cruiser! We need to push them back so our people can land!"

Overhead, the Normandy's Firebirds streaked downward, charging their fusion lances before loosing one kinetic projectile each. The blunt tungsten carbide slugs smashed into the alien cruiser to devastating effect. Had the cruiser possessed a thinner hull, the rounds would have simply passed through. Instead, they were absorbed by the rocky hull and transmitted the force of their impacts to the far larger ship. The ship's engine section shot downward, crumpling the metal around the main thrusters on the planet's surface and wreaking havoc on the delicate control systems. A third far more powerful shot blazed down from orbit, homing in on the power core of the crippled cruiser using targeting data from the Firebird drones scanners.

The cruiser's kinetic barriers flickered briefly before the kinetic lance shattered them and pierced the ship. The large mass effect drive core was obliterated by the pinpoint strike, leaving the alien cruiser now completely helpless.

The Firebirds now turned their attention to the swarming alien attackers, unleashing plasma charges that incinerated the reinforcements and converted the bay exit into a virtual oven. The remaining aliens were now trapped inside of their own ship to be bombarded at leisure by the Normandy and its drones.

Meanwhile, a cloud of dots appeared in the sky above, growing rapidly in size. More than forty Alliance troops descended on the colony, with one squad landing amidst the colonial defense force and the rest in a position to flank the enemy invaders.

"Have at them, boys!" Silva roared, leading his squad in a lightning fast charge over the heads of the insectoid enemies.

"The cavalry's here!" Williams called. "We got this!"

Shepard, for her part, opted to silently and efficiently gun down the enemy aliens alongside the Spectre.

* * *

The ancient alien intelligence watched through the networked connection with its thralls. The arrival of additional reinforcements was unexpected, but potentially a boon. There would be few opportunities to observe the humans elite forces before the true arrival of its kind. And from what intelligence it gleaned from this Cycle's Extranet and its own predecessor, that one crimson-haired human was an exceptional warrior, one of a kind. If its own experimental units could eliminate that warrior, so much the better.

Of course, to ensure a higher chance of success even in this deteriorating battle, direct intervention would be necessary.

* * *

The X-Rays were far more cautious now, falling back and attempting to set impromptu ambushes that were significantly more effective at frustrating the Alliance troops and colonial defenders. Still, everyone knew it was only a matter of time.

Then the sounds of battle were drowned out by a loud screeching. A shuttle dropped out of the sky, trailing smoke and displaying damage characteristic of exiting FTL travel inside of an atmosphere. Everyone's eyes followed the craft as it slammed into the hastily cleared central area of the battle. For a moment, nothing happened, and then a collective roaring echoed across the battlefield as the half-melted entry ramp on the craft exploded outward. From the smoke, strode several new shapes, including one very large hulking figure.

"What the hell?" Shepard wondered as the figure bellowed a challenge to the human fighters.

"That's Garm!" Garrus gasped.

As if in response to his name, the monstrously overgrown krogan turned to eyeball the two veteran soldiers. **"HUUUUURRRRRRRRR!"** he roared before hefting out a truly enormous weapon, grasping it in both hands, and aiming it across the field.

"Oh SHIT!" Garrus yelped, recognizing the weapon, before a blue glow surrounded him and he found himself flying sideways toward Lieutenant Williams.

Shepard had moved to dodge, but was caught flat footed by the speed of the projectile from the cannon. Even through her shield, that one shot hit her with a murderous punch to the chest, sending her flying through several prefabricated shelters.

"Kill that thing!" Silva yelled. At once, the defenders focused fire on the giant krogan, who simply turned slightly while flaring his biotic barriers. Meanwhile, the rest of the new arrivals surged forward, armed with salvaged mass effect rifles and taking advantage of the distraction to draw a bead on the defenders. Before the defenders realized their mistake, there were eight fewer militia left alive.

As the Alliance soldiers retaliated, quickly obliterating the stragglers and the X-Rays that were caught in the open, Garm roared again before smashing the butt of his cannon into the ground. A wave of biotic energy traveled forward, dislodging a number of human fighters from their cover, and allowing the invaders a new chance to pick them off, to William's fury.

"Two can play that game!" she snarled, before charging her cyborg body to the limit, leaping forward, and slamming herself into the ground, creating her own wave attack that threw much of the enemy force off balance.

Unfortunately, her reckless action placed her directly in front of the raging krogan, who leveled his cannon right at her position.

Only a hastily erected barrier prevented her from instant death, throwing off the impacting round just enough that she only lost three of her prosthetic limbs rather than have the armor around her still-human chest cavity crush her organs to a paste.

 **"HUUUUUURRRRRRRRR!"** Garm howled, raising his weapon high in victory.

"Shit!" Williams' terrified XO swore.

"Fall back!" Silva ordered. "We can't deal with all of them right now!"

Garrus scooped up the fallen lieutenant before running away as fast as he could.

 **Illium, Nos Astra**

The fact that he'd managed to pass a message to his family telling them to enact one of his contingencies was the only thing that gave him a sense of relief. Let the Alliance try to find them now. Even he himself wouldn't know their location.

But at the moment, he was focused on silently creeping through the darkened halls of Nos Astra's police headquarters, towards the archives, to look up anything and everything to do with that murdered asari, as ordered.

Lawson was regrettably unfamiliar with the identity of the agent assigned locally to handle the cover-up job, so the case file would be first place to start. He slotted a special chip into a core terminal, and waited as the tool did its job. Finally, his omnitool blinked at him, and he began to peruse the system.

He was completely unsurprised to find most of the case file devoted to that same corporate blackmail garbage he'd heard about on the streets. The only real information of note was the names of the officers assigned to the case. In particular, the one name that was neither asari, salarian, nor turian: Hermann Ubrect.

Quickly finding the personnel file, he scanned it for the names of any contacts or other cases to look into. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Pure vanilla. Even the file on that asari was bare of any indication that Ubrect had been anything but a regular cop.

Still, he was the only human to be involved at all with the case of Riyaan Har'al. If Lawson was as knowledgeable of her own organization as she seemed, she might recognize the name.

As the drell made himself scarce, his senses failed to alert him to the figure watching him hack the archives.

 **Horizon**

Before she could even try to remember where she was, Shepard found herself yanked by her feet out of the wrecked prefabricated structure and hoisted into the air by the mutated krogan giant.

 **"HUUUUUURRRRRR!"** Garm roared in her face before violently whipping her into the ground.

"Nguh!" Shepard wheezed, struggling to inhale through the pain in her torso.

The krogan lifted her up over his head and mashed her back into the ground behind him, before flinging the woman into a shed full of construction materials.

 **"HUUURRR…"** Garm snarled before hefting his gun and firing another projectile into the shed and creating a large explosion of dust. Wisps of steam rose from his body as the gun circulated hot coolant to the armor plates bolted directly to his skin. The pain of his scalded flesh only served to further enrage him. **"HUUUUURRRRRR!"**

He charged at the shed and swung the gun clenched firmly in his right hand, obliterating what was left. As he paused to recover from his swing, Shepard dashed out of the smoke and rammed her fist into his left kneecap with all her might, violently wrenching the joint.

Garm howled in pain and rage as the left side of his body collapsed. He tried to use his left hand to steady himself, but Shepard landed a brutal uppercut under his chin that sent him sprawling sideways.

She moved toward him again, but swung out with his right arm, catching her across the chest with the barrel of his gun and sending her flying once again. As he struggled to his feet, a red beam tagged the trigger guard of his gun, partially melting it and causing renewed roars of pain as it burned his hand.

Garrus held back a snarl and fired another shot at the krogan's wounded leg, only to see a barrier flicker into existence. "Shepard, take out that generator pack on his back!"

As if in response to his words, the X-Rays chose that moment to swarm around the krogan, creating a rear guard formation.

 _"Vakarian, A bunch of X-Rays peeled off of the bunker assault!"_ Silva reported. _"You got incoming!"_

"Incoming already came!" Garrus yelped before diving behind a concrete barrier to avoid the hail of particle beam fire.

 **"HUUUUUUUUURRRRRRR!"** Garm bellowed, raising his gun and aiming at the wall. Only a healthy sense of self-preservation saved the turian Spectre as another shot pulverized his cover.

"Waugh!" Garrus was flung twelve meters away and caught his back on another concrete barrier before sliding over it. His shoulders locked up in blinding agony. "Why is it always my fucking back?" he whimpered.

The krogan turned his attention back toward Shepard, but before he could fire again, a wave of green plasma swept over the group of invaders. Instantly, the X-Rays all turned to ashes while Garm shrieked in pain as the armored plates on his body turned red hot. He turned to aim his gun up as the _Arkbird_ flew past, but stumbled forward as Shepard ran up and rammed a jagged steel rail into the generator pack. She clung to it as Garm spun around again, unwittingly helping her to evade him, before taking a grenade and wedging it into the crack. Then she jumped off and dashed away.

The grenade blew apart the generator, driving shrapnel deep into Garm's back and causing the capacitors to discharge into his body. **"HUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRR!"** he howled, twitching in place and unable to move as the _Arkbird_ came back for another pass. More green fire burned the ground, and Garm screamed as he shook the partially slagged gun from his arm.

Shepard ran back in and swung a fuel cell into the krogan's face, dumping fuel all over his torso, which instantly ignited from the red hot armor plates on his shoulders, enveloping his upper body in a blazing inferno.

 **"HUUUURRRR! HUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRR!"** Garm bellowed, slapping at his face and completely oblivious to Shepard as she moved behind him and smashed his spinal column with another punch. No longer receiving brain signals, his legs instantly gave out and he pitched forward onto his chest, still burning and screaming.

Shepard took several deep breaths, wincing from the stabbing pains in her chest, before painfully straightening up and walking over toward Garrus. As she went, she keyed her radio. "Thanks for the support, _Arkbird._ "

 _"We aim to please, ma'am,"_ Colonel Nagase replied.

"How was your latest flying lesson?" Shepard grinned as she pulled the turian to his feet.

"Go fuck yourself, Shepard," Garrus muttered as he gingerly rubbed his sore back. "Ah aaaaaooow…"

"...hurts…"

Both soldiers turned to look at the krogan, now whimpering pitifully. "…hurts…" Garm croaked hoarsely, his throat raw and blistered from the burning fuel.

The two moved closer to stand in front of the crippled giant. Shepard reached out and pulled one of the armor plates off his shoulder with a sickening squelch. Underneath was raw muscle interlaced with Reaper cybernetics. As they watched, new skin was already growing back over the exposed and scalded tissue.

Garm shifted his head and looked up at the two. "…hurts…" he gasped. "…hurts…"

"You know," Garrus said as he pulled out his pistol, "you were a pain in the ass to catch, and a menace to the Terminus Systems, but even you didn't deserve this. Nobody does."

 **The Normandy, Medical Bay**

"Once again, your presence here is testament to your sheer recklessness and your astonishing luck, Miss Williams," Dr. Chakwas rebuked.

"At least I didn't break half of my skeleton this time," the lieutenant answered as she lay limbless on an operating table while the doctor worked on calibrating the new replacement limbs.

"Just because much of your body is now artificial and replaceable is no excuse not to take better care of yourself," Chakwas fired back. "Frankly, your apparent suicidal tendencies make me question the wisdom of your being given a command position."

"You could say the same thing about me," Shepard noted as one of the nurses finished wrapping up her chest before tugging on the bindings to make sure they weren't too tight.

"You have the benefit of being arguably engineered for such things, captain. Miss Williams does not."

"Ma'am," Pressly called as he walked into the bay. "We've finished loading the body into an isolated container. We're putting it in the quarantine area of the hold until we figure out what to do with it. EDI is busy extracting data from the alien cruiser and that crashed shuttle, and our engineering teams are working overtime to fix up as much of the colony and equipment as possible. They estimate they should be finished in about a week."

"Do we know anything about those X-Rays?" Shepard asked as she got off the bed.

"They're called the Collectors," Garrus answered as another nurse fussed over his back with turian-specific anesthesia. "They're rarely seen outside of the Terminus Systems. According to Mordin, they sometimes trade valuable tech for live specimens of various species. No one knows where they operate from or where they come from."

 _"And unfortunately, that will continue to remain a mystery,"_ EDI added over the speakers. _"I was unable to retrieve much from the Collector ship databanks due to the failsafes that wiped the computers. All I have is a record of recent communications."_

"Think maybe the Quarians could help with recovering data?" the captain wondered.

"Tali is the only one staying with us," Pressly replied. "We can ask her as soon as she comes out of her quarters."

 _"In the meantime, I've sent a copy of the data I found to Dr. Solus's terminal. He is taking a look at it right now."_

* * *

Mordin frowned at the screen as he contemplated the decoded messages. And then he thought about the repercussions and certainty of diplomatic complications. "Most troubling, if Shadow Broker was involved," he murmured to himself. "Alliance retaliation likely. Must warn others."

 _Codex: BOLT gun_

 _The Ballistic Ordnance Linear Trajectory gun is intended as a crew-served armor suppression weapon. The entire assembly and crew can be carried aboard a small transport, and deploys to operational status in approximately ten minutes._

 _Essentially an artillery sniper weapon, the BOLT gun uses mass effect fields to fire larger projectiles at very high velocities with extreme accuracy and minimal recoil or heat signature._

 _The weapon assembly comes with a fabrication unit and feeder ingots of material with which to construct the sabots and rounds. It is capable of a variety of configurations including armor piercing, incendiary, deep penetrator, anti-air and extended range rounds._

 _Because of the size of the projectiles and correspondingly greater energy to accelerate them even with mass effect fields, heat dissipation is a considerable issue, requiring an array of heat sinks to cool the weapon during heavy use._

 _In accordance with Hierarchy doctrine, the gun would ideally be deployed on high points with a long and unobstructed view, usually protected by anti-missile units. The long range and low profile increase the chances of being able to attack any armored enemy force from a distance and not be targeted by counter fire._

 _Contact Report: Garm_

 _Originally a krogan with an abnormally strong healing factor, Garm was enhanced and mutated into a hulking colossus with heavy armor, augmented biotics, and a crew-served weapon wielded with one hand._

 _The armor plating served a dual purpose as heat sinks for the weapon assembly mounted on his back and his right arm. The entire system used his body tissue (specifically the water content thereof) to dissipate heat._

 _The enhancements from the Culexus Project granted the subject an extreme increase in physical strength and pain tolerance. Notably, the subject survived two strafing runs of plasma projector fire as well as being doused in burning fuel by Captain Erin Shepard._

 _The subject also demonstrated severe mental deterioration, possibly as a result of Indoctrination._

 ** **Who was that watching Thane hack the system?****

 ** **Poor poor Garm. In the process of remodeling his body, the Reaper tech caused him so much pain that it completely broke his mind. That one word was all he could say. Think about that. Think about just how torturous that has to be to completely break a krogan through physical pain. No wonder Mordin resigned from the project, eh?****

 **And now, the ME2 storyline really kicks off. The Alliance is now aware of the Collectors, and will be foaming at the mouth to hunt down the base and obliterate it. The Reapers know this, and will change tactics. No more attacks on colonies after this. Instead, they will try to sow discord and chaos throughout Citadel and Terminus space, forcing everyone to waste their time dealing with small fry and stepping on each others diplomatic toes. Divide and Conquer.  
**

 **And just to clarify, the reason the militia and the Normandy's forces had a hard time dealing with the Collectors is because they didn't bring the plasma weapons for the jump. They had to rely on lasers and "expeditionary" mass effect weaponry. Helljumpers don't go down with advanced weapons. They clear out a deployment zone so the cavalry can bring the advanced weapons down afterwards.**

 **Garrus, of course, brought his custom rifle down.**

 **EDIT: I'd like to put in a shout out to Sythe, the writer of the Naruto fanfic Tis Femina. If anyone wants to see a master of the political game, read that story.**

 **Sythe, thank you for favoriting and following my story. I'm flattered you think it's worth reading.**


	33. Diplomacy, the Good and the Bad

**Sorry for the wait. I got distracted by the Overwatch Open Beta, RB: Siege Dust Line, and the XCOM 2 Alien Hunters DLC.**

 **Oh, and Captain America: Civil War.**

 **Side note: I will not buy Overwatch until they rebalance the characters, and the Alien Hunters DLC weapons makes everything feel like Cheesy Mode.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Thirty-one

 **Omega, Slums**

She wrinkled her nose in disgust as she made her way deeper into the decrepit cesspool. It reminded her of her past, one she'd tried to forget. The aftermath of brutally murdering her owner, on the run from Hegemony slave catchers, scrounging from waste, near-perpetual illness and borderline starvation, constantly terrified of her shadow, all things she was happy to forget.

She had clawed her way to the top of the heap of the Terminus Systems. Her name was in the mouths of powerful people who either answered to her or feared her. She had relished in the terror she inspired, particularly amongst the batarian scum her crew had hunted.

Was. Had been. All of her accomplishments undone when she'd been captured by that wretched turian Spectre. It rankled her that the Alliance had stolen her chance at vengeance. But that took second place to what she had been put through in the last three years. Project Culexus.

That was what Vyrnnus had called it. A desperate attempt by the Citadel races to close the gap between themselves and their adversaries in the Alliance. In the process of killing Saren Arterius and crushing his assault on the Citadel, they had both revealed the full extent of their capabilities and provided the Citadel with a means of countering them. In her mind, the humans were responsible for her torment. She vividly recalled the pain she'd suffered, the creeping, the itching, the slow feeling of losing herself to the alien technology now bound to her body and will. The Salarians had subjected her to their experiments, seeing her not as an object of fear, but a mere tool, no different from how her owner had viewed her.

But she would change that. She allowed a smirk to trace across her face as she continued forward. The Terminus Systems bore no love for either the Citadel or the Alliance. And neither of the so-called galactic powers was willing to cross it, for such was the danger of uniting all the criminal enterprises against them. She would do that. She intended to take control not only of her old organization, but her former rivals. She would spread fear throughout the galaxy. The same fear she'd experienced before, she would see to it that everyone would live it. Everyone would fear her, and she would never be crossed again.

The irony of how her own fears drove her never occurred to Jona Sideris as she lead her entourage of Culexus followers toward the Eclipse outpost.

 **The Normandy, Command Deck**

 _"Appreciate the help. We got it from here, ma'am,"_ Captain Anzo Halish said over the comm line.

"Good luck, captain," Shepard replied. "And tell Lieutenant Williams that the next time she totals that body of hers in some stupid stunt, I'm going to come back and beat some sense into her skull the hard way."

 _"Maybe you'll succeed where I haven't, ma'am,"_ the junior officer laughed.

"She seems like she's been doing better compared to five years ago," Garrus noted. "More talkative, at least."

"From what I've been told, she had extensive psychiatric counseling after Saren's attack. And she was one of the first volunteers to go through our new MEC Soldier program."

"What exactly is that, by the way?"

"So back during the Ethereal War," Shepard began, "we were trying to come up with anything that would give our people an edge against the invaders. We created MEC troopers, soldiers who would pilot heavily armored mechanical suits with heavy weapons to give us an edge."

"Sounds like powered exoskeletons."

"In a way. MEC troopers had to have their arms and legs replaced with cybernetic interfaces. Honestly, it was more of a way to allow heavily injured soldiers to still contribute, and we were in desperate times."

"I'll say," Garrus noted dryly. "But you said MEC troopers, and you called Williams a MEC soldier. What's the difference?"

"MEC suits are about fourteen foot tall armored weapons platforms. They're also huge targets," Shepard continued. "After the war, we worked on trying to downscale weapons technology so we could make them lower profile and more mobile. Of course, we ran into the problem of keeping our technology safe. Then we got our hands on LEGION's chassis. Since your people already know all about Element Zero technology, we finally had a way to deploy MEC soldiers without letting you get a chance at Elerium."

"Anyone ever tell you that you guys are paranoid?" the turian asked.

"You guys don't roll out your full arsenal right away, right?"

"Point taken," Garrus raised his hands in surrender.

"So how's Tali?" Sheard queried, switching gears.

"She won't talk to anyone right now," Garrus muttered. "She's still holed up in her quarters. I'd like to know exactly what those geth did to her."

"It seemed to me like they showed her something. What do you call the incident that got the Quarians banished? The Morning War?"

"Yeah."

"Probably had something to do with that. And it must have been a big surprise for her. Something to rock her world."

"Didn't think you were a shrink."

"I'm a psionic, Vakarian," Shepard smirked. "It comes with the whole 'powers of the mind' spiel."

"Of course," Garrus answered sardonically. "How could I miss that the rampaging red-headed juggernaut has a brain?"

Shepard's mouth stretched into a sweet yet terrifying smile. "Garrus," she began, "do you like having a spinal column?"

"...I'm just going to shut up now…" the turian shivered, phantom pains shooting through his abused back.

"Joker, let's get moving!" the captain ordered.

 _"Aye aye, ma'am."_

There was the barest of a shudder through the ship's hull as the Normandy broke orbit and moved off into deep space.

"I wonder how things are going with Miranda," Shepard muttered. "God knows her assignments are never as loud."

"Who's Miranda?"

"Nice try, Vakarian."

 _Someone like you I bet,_ he thought. _Another Alliance supersoldier. Sloppy, Shepard._

"So where are we headed?"

"Unless Mordin or someone else comes up with another lead on the test subjects or the Collectors, we're heading to Tuchanka."

"For what?" the turian wondered. "Are we giving Garm his last rites?"

"We left his body in a secure transport container with the 93rd Task Group. They're taking Garm back to our guys to dissect him. We're going to pay a visit to Wrex. Last I heard, he's been rounding up the krogan clans on our behalf."

"Isn't the Alliance supposed to be keeping out of the DMZ?"

"For all you know," Shepard grinned. "If it makes you feel better, Wrex made our help a condition of his help last time around. He helped us with Saren, we help him unite the krogan, and he leads them down a more peaceful road. In his own words, the galaxy used them and tossed them. The best way to get back at them is to let them rot. In peace."

"Right, the old krogan insult of being ignored," Garrus noted. "Not that I really care that much, but you know it's not that simple. The Citadel just bitches and moans about you guys, but that's only because you haven't really interfered with us in a way they can't justify. People might not directly remember the Krogan Rebellions, but they know how much it screwed up the galaxy. And as a former major-select for Blackwatch, I can tell you that if there's one thing the Hierarchy will take up arms over, it's a united krogan race."

Shepard shrugged. "Then they'll have to recognize that a fractured krogan race is worse than a united one. If the krogan don't have a clear leader to follow, they'll be more willing to unite with the Reapers, or their representatives. You saw how much of a pain in the ass Garm was. Tell the Hierarchy that they can choose between definitely fighting an army of that, or _maybe_ fighting an army of regular krogan. And whoever or whatever the Reapers have on their side."

"Oh sure. Sell them on a single enemy force instead of a three-way war with genocidal robots on one side and the most technologically advanced and ruthless military in the galaxy on the other. Not saying that I disagree with you, Shepard. I'm just saying there are complications. For one, the Citadel doesn't believe you guys about the Reapers. They don't want to believe it. They haven't been through the shit you have. You guys were borderline enslaved or exterminated. We just had an uppity race of bloodthirsty lizards trying to take over."

"Right," Shepard sighed. "The old political solution of ignoring a problem until it bites you in the ass."

 **Omega, Triple Threat Command**

"'Take out their headquarters,' you said," Vortash snarled as he ducked under a spray of gunfire. "'Explosives solves everything,' you said!"

"Hey I thought what we did at the warehouse would work again!" Melanis yelped, throwing an incendiary cluster mine into a charging mob of vorcha.

"Well congratulations," Montague growled, pinning an abnormally large turian against a wrecked truck with his heavy machine gun before pulling the trigger and ignoring the splattering of blood on the rebuilt cargo-lifter. "It did. You managed to miss the target we were trying to take out _just like last time!_ "

"Hey! The warehouse had a basement!"

"And you hit the radio building instead of their sleeping quarters! How in the hell did you make it in an intelligence service like the STG?"

"Because I'm good with bombs?"

 _"Bombs are easy to make,"_ Butler called.

 _"Yes. The hard part is targeting,"_ Sensat chimed in, shortly before a loud wet gurgling sound echoed over the line. _"That is why I prefer the knife. It is much cleaner than your explosives."_

"'Cleaner,' he says," Vortash repeated, firing his thermobaric pistol and eliminating a group of four batarian thugs trying to set up their own machine gun. "as he slices and dices with a knife as long as most people's legs."

 _"My messes only require cleaning solvents, janitors and body bags. Melanis needs a team of ordnance technicians, heavy lifting equipment, and accountants."_ Another pair of voices shrieked in pain before being wetly silenced. _"Also, I can clean up my own messes as required, on occasion."_

"Hey, all you really need for my after-action clean up is an ash tray!" the salarian protested. "Guoah! A really…really…big…ashtray…gimmeahandplease?!"

Vortash spun around and fired his pistol again. The miniature explosive landed two meters behind the attacking krogan. The blast flung the two away, one howling in flash-fried agony and the other screaming as he sailed into a dumpster.

"Huh, so that's what a flying angel looks like." the turian mused. "You're welcome!"

"You couldn't have done that earlier?" the human in the exo-suit smirked.

"I hate you…" Melanis groaned.

 **The Citadel, Presidium**

"Good morning, Councilors," Udina greeted them as he entered the room with Major Bailey in tow.

"Ambassador," Sparatus replied, nodding politely.

"I regret that my government has some rather pointed questions that may touch sore spots for your people."

"And what might they be about?" Tevos asked warily.

"Project Culexus."

Valern closed his eyes and cursed Garrus Vakarian under his breath. "Ambassador, surely your people can understand a project to create preventative measures against a potential threat-"

"We do," Udina agreed. "The problem that we have with the project is the fact that your escaped test subjects were involved in the attacks on independent human colonies. And you did not inform us of their escape."

"As independent colonies, they aren't under your jurisdiction," Sparatus pointed out. "Your concern for them is what some would call 'speciesist.'"

"And arguably, others would call it 'being a good neighbor.' What it could be called is beside the point. The point my government is making is that we had several liaison groups out there conducting investigations and goodwill missions, and something of yours was involved with the root cause of the attacks we were seeking to prevent."

"Come now, ambassador. Do you really expect us to inform you out of hand about a top secret military project just because some of these test subjects escaped custody?" Valern demanded.

"When those test subjects are by and large wanted and dangerous criminals of your society and augmented with military-grade cybernetics and weapons, I think it is not unreasonable for you to alert everyone as to their escape."

"And risk a social panic in doing so," Tevos retorted. "Please, ambassador, such simplistic arguments overlook the complexities in the situation. And I have no doubt you and your government are aware that there is little point in pointing fingers. Particularly after the fact."

"I am simply executing my instructions, Councilors," Udina held up his hands in a conciliatory manner. "I mean no offense."

"As Tevos says, what's done is done. You wouldn't be here if your government had something in mind for addressing this situation," Sparatus eyed the ambassador. "What are you really after?"

Udina cleared his throat. "I have a request on behalf of the independents for material compensation. Specifically, they desire subsidizing for the supplies and prefabricated units they will need to purchase to rebuild the colonies raided and damaged by the attackers. They sent us preliminary estimates for the damage."

With trepidation, Valern accepted the datapad and scanned it. He breathed a sigh of relief that the estimates tallied with the observations from the back-channel report of Dr. Solus. At least the Alliance wasn't trying to pull a fast one on them.

Not that they needed to, he thought. It went without saying that such compensation would require a military escort of the transport caravan into the Terminus Systems to prevent potential raiding. And the number of colonies would require a substantial redirection of the Council Forces to this public relations mission, diverting from other more pressing concerns. Like the blockade fleet along the krogan DMZ.

"And what of the Alliance's demands?" he asked, passing the datapad to Sparatus.

"The Alliance requires cooperation along with every scrap of information you have on the aliens known as the 'Collectors.'"

"Define 'cooperation,'"

Ambassador Udina smiled. "Councilors, we understand that you have your own issues to attend to, so we won't ask much of your assets. I believe the current situation where we once again have Spectre Vakarian traveling with Captain Erin Shepard as they scour the galaxy will account for much of the cooperation we desire. The only additional thing we desire is that you keep an ear out for the escaped test subjects, the geth, and the Collectors. And that you inform us when you learn anything new."

"That is a reasonable request," the salarian replied, "and we can certainly abide by that if you reciprocate with information about the Leviathan of Dis."

For the first time, Udina looked confused. "I beg your pardon?"

"Ambassador, we have records of an Alliance operation within Terminus territory where Alliance soldiers, including one Commander Kaidan Alenko, slaughtered a gathering of batarians."

"While they were mercenaries and criminals, it doesn't change the fact that this is a blatant violation of our territorial sovereignty," Sparatus chimed in. "'Alliance soldiers murdering our citizens within our territory.' That headline won't go over very well with our people."

"I have no knowledge of this," Udina protested indignantly.

"I don't doubt that," Valern nodded. "Feel free to confirm it with your superiors. But this would be a condition for us to accept your civilization's demands. The batarians in question won't be missed, but the Leviathan of Dis is something we have been trying to find for a long time. If you are agreeable, we will overlook this violation of our sovereignty."

"I will relay this to my superiors," Udina said, already thinking about the blistering words he would be having with General Summers and Director Harper. "Thank you for your time."

"It was a pleasure," Sparatus replied. "It really was," he continued after the ambassador left. "It's nice to finally dangle something over them for a change."

"I still think you two are playing a very dangerous game," Tevos chastised them. "We have no idea how they will react. If they tell us to stick it where the soft blue is, then what?"

"If they do, it will bring us both to brinkmanship," Valern admitted. "But it would work for us instead of them. They firmly believe in the 'Reaper threat' that Saren was trying to bring about. No rational person wishes to fight a war on two fronts. They would prefer to have us as potential allies."

"Not everyone is rational," the asari warned.

"Everyone is rational by their own standards," Valern countered. "By the Alliance's standards, it would be highly irrational to bring about a war that would bleed them out before the Reapers came."

"So you believe them about the threat?"

"I believe that they believe it. I have not seen independent proof of the Reapers as a continued threat."

Tevos whirled on Sparatus. "And what about you?"

Sparatus shrugged. "I'm inclined to believe it, but I can't think like a soldier anymore. If we planned for uncertainties all the time, we'd be spreading ourselves too damned thin. Hell, we are already. Our commitments to the Relay Network, the DMZ, the Terminus border patrol, we don't have any more reserves. So I have to pick and choose carefully. We all do."

"And if we choose wrong?"

The turian shrugged fatalistically. "As the humans say, shit happens. Deal with it."

 **Omega, Unknown Warehouse**

"So, you're the one whose been taking over my crew," Jona noted as she walked ahead of an utterly terrified salarian lieutenant.

"Oh is that how frog-boy put it?" Jester smirked. "Because I seem to remember he agreed to work _together,_ so I didn't actually take over your band of pretty-boy misfits."

"I don't care," the asari stated baldly. "You took what's mine. All of Eclipse is mine."

"Not what I heard, sweet-cheeks," Jester replied in a sing-song voice. "How was that prison cell by the way?"

"You really should know better than to piss me off, _boy_." Jona snarled, flaring her biotics. "Didn't anyone ever tell you about Jona the Sadist?"

"Well let's see here," Jester pulled out a notepad and idly flipped through it. "Omega, the cesspool of the galaxy, Blue Suns, full of macho posturing idiots, Blood Pack, full of just plain idiots, Eclipse…ah nope, nothing about you. Nobody cared." He closed the notepad with a shit-eating grin.

"Then you get to find out everything firsthand!" The asari pulled back her hand before thrusting forward with a tremendously powerful biotic blast.

"Ooh, she's feisty!" Jester cackled as he jumped out of the way.

The utter disregard he afforded her infuriated her like nothing else. She reached out with her biotics and froze him in place while lunging forward with a biotically enhanced punch.

"Bitch, please," the human laughed as the dust settled, enjoying the shocked look on her face. Then he glowed green, easily broke out of her hold, and then slammed her with a vicious uppercut. "Shoryuken!"

Reflexes honed through centuries of combat allowed her to orient herself and land on her feet. She warily regarded the human, ignoring the pain in her jaw.

"Oh come on lady, why so serious?" Jester asked. "Take it from someone who knows. You need to… _lighten up!_ "

A green aura surrounded her, and Jona abruptly found herself flying straight up into the ceiling. More specifically, into a solid metal cross-beam at almost nine meters per second. Her world exploded in a whiteout of agony. The second wave erupted when she slammed back onto the ground of the warehouse.

"Now that's going to leave a mark," Jester commented. "Well, then again, who's going to know? You got all those other marks from your old master, right?"

The mere mention of the slaver from her past brought her rage to the fore, burning through the haze of pain. Her biotics unfurled fully and she shot straight up and unleashed a massive shockwave at the object of her wrath. "DIE!"

Jester's green aura flared brightly, easily weathering the blue biotic storm bearing down on him. When it cleared, he was standing in the same place, idly checking his fingernails. "Oh, we done yet?"

"I'm going to kill you!" Jona roared.

"You and what army? Oh, you mean that army?" Jester mockingly pointed at the hapless salarian lieutenant. "That's my army."

With a shriek of incoherent rage, Jona lashed out again. But this time, Jester caught her fist, casually crushing her biotic aura with his bare hand. As he locked eyes with her, his expression changed to one of pure malice. And Jona Sideris felt her mind being invaded by a foreign sensation. It took a moment for her to recognize it: terror. More to the point, it was the same terror she'd felt as a young maiden at the hands of the slaver.

"You don't get it, do you, girl?" Jester whispered. "I run this place. Down here, I make the rules. Down here, I make the threats. Down here…I'm God."

Her breath caught in her throat as the human repeated the same words that wretched slaver had said to her over her beaten and broken body centuries ago. The exact same words that had haunted her dreams ever since. "N-no…" she whimpered.

"Oh yeah," the man replied. "I'm your worst nightmare. Welcome to my world, _slave._ "

With an idle flick of his wrist, Jester wrapped the stricken asari in a green aura and flung her through the warehouse wall. "Take that trash back to your place, frog-boy," he said before turning around, not even bothering to check if the salarian was obeying him. He walked down to the basement, where a single light fixture burned bright into the face of another asari. A much younger and similarly terrified asari.

"Now where were we?" Jester grinned, picking up a box cutter as Mierin screamed around the gag in her mouth.

 **And let the politicking begin!**

 **Poor poor Mierin. This won't end well for her.**

* * *

 **Now I'd like to talk about one of the most important parts of a story: dialogue.**

 **I'm told that this is the hardest thing for an author to write. Personally, I've never had a problem with it. But I have seen countless examples of people writing shit that is so bad it is painful to read. I mean it. I feel a sharp stabbing pain in my eyeballs from how wooden and unrealistic it is.**

 **To be fair, I get the feeling that a good number of writers might not have English as a first language. That's understandable. I know from hearing my relatives talk how hard it is to learn the more informal speech of a Germanic language like English. This is exacerbated if your culture is much more formal, like in Vietnam, China, Japan and Korea, where social status is immensely important and casting aspersions on them is a grave insult.**

 **The best advice I can give is this: put yourself in the character's shoes. Write how someone in their place would talk. Diplomats and officials in a formal setting, for example, will almost never curse. Much of their wording tends to be innuendo since it's a faux pas to explicitly talk about certain things like domestic unrest or past humiliations. A soldier may or may not swear up a blue streak depending on if the character is supposed to be straight laced or not. A customer service worker will talk informally, but politely while in front of customers, but may speak very differently among coworkers.**

 **Know your character, know the culture you're using, know how conversation naturally flows. Use jokes. Use snark. Have a conversation go off on a tangent. Even the most serious of people in real life will usually make a few irrelevant asides during the course of a long conversation.**

 **Not every conversation has to be pure exposition. And not every expository conversation has to cover everything. Some writers tend to forget that the audience can read between the lines. If you take away all the ambiguity in a story, you lose suspense: the most important quality to keeping readers interested. People read because they want to see what happens next. People love mystery. And if you make it so anyone could see what will happen next at every single point in the story, you give your audience no reason to stay interested.**

 **Long story short: write how a person would normally talk. Use irrelevancies. Leave things open to interpretation. And for the love of all that is holy, please don't incessantly repeat the same information or the same conversation between different characters over and over again (looking at you, Starian Nightzz).**


	34. The Archangel and the Omega

**This chapter took a while to finish, partially because I've been busy replaying SWTOR, and partially because of how awkward it was to write the first scene.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Thirty-two

 **The Olympus, Secure Communications**

Even through the holographic comm system, all parties involved could hear the slight cracking of wood as General Summers slammed his artificial hand on his desk.

 _"Respectfully, I must insist that this situation is not as bad as it appears, General,"_ Director Harper said, cutting off any reprimand before it could begin.

 _"Do tell,"_ the old soldier growled.

 _"Consider the fact that they are offering a compromise in the first place. The Citadel has always been inferior to us in terms of technology. Everyone knows it. They are desperate to get their hands on anything that can bring them up to parity. But we could do without chasing the Leviathan of Dis, especially if it is in fact a derelict or dormant Reaper."_

 _"So you suggest stiffing them and accepting increased antipathy and a major diplomatic incident that would rile up their people and military forces?"_ Udina demanded. _"I question your definition of 'bad,' director, if you think the less undesirable outcome of this Morton's Fork scenario is the potential wrath of another galactic power."_

 _"I am merely trying to put this situation in perspective, Ambassador,"_ Harper replied mildly. _"While we would indeed be risking their wrath, the Citadel also has to deal with pirate groups, the continuing Hegemony Remnant insurgency, concerns over the increasing unity of the Krogan race, and possible incursions from the geth."_

"Those are all possible concerns that we share," Hackett pointed out, "with the exception of the Krogan turning aggressive against us."

 _"Or so we would if our logistical situation was different. As it is, only three of our systems are known to outsiders. Any potential malcontent would know that we would station forces to protect those exposed planets. To succeed in any way, it would require a massive commitment of resources to almost negligible gain. And they would have to draw from other more crucial areas that I know they would rather not."_

 _"Director, have you considered that perhaps taking advantage of them is not the wisest option at the moment?"_ Dr. Vahlen rebuked him. _"I do seem to recall that the Reapers present a looming threat that overshadows anything the Citadel could pose to us. As the Ambassador has said before, it is better to have allies than enemies."_

 _"And before you apply your hard-earned cynicism to that, consider the benefit of having others stand with you in the face of a greater threat,"_ Udina interjected.

Through the line, Harper fixed his piercing blue gaze on Udina before answering. _"And consider our current position. There is a great deal of distrust between us."_

 _"And your actions aren't helping matters!"_ Udina exploded. _"Yes, you are dealing with enemies of the Alliance. How wonderful. And yet at the same time, you give everyone else the impression that we will trust no one and do whatever we see fit as a nation! Eliminating threats and creating them are not mutually exclusive."_

It was a rare thing, Hackett thought to himself, to see the usually unruffled Jack Harper brought up short so thoroughly.

 _"Perhaps I have been overzealous…"_ he admitted.

"That's an understatement," Hackett muttered to himself.

 _"What would you have us do then, Ambassador?"_ Summers asked pointedly.

Now it was Udina's turn to find himself at a loss for words. _"I would recommend we agree to their terms,"_ he offered, tentatively. _"Yes, it may encourage a bolder attitude and bolder demands further down the road, but it also lays the groundwork for a lessening of tensions and suspicion between us."_

 _"Or in other words, let's be reasonable now so they might be reasonable later,"_ the general summarized.

 _"You could put it that way,"_ Udina agreed. _"Remember that they have the advantage right now. We are gearing up to fight the Reapers. We do not need a two-front conflict."_

The general nodded slightly before turning his eye on Hackett. _"What do you think, Steven?"_

Hacket shifted uncomfortably. "I am on the fence, sir. The Ambassador has a good idea about appeasing them, but I wonder if we would still end up fighting them anyway."

 _"How do you come to that conclusion?"_ Udina asked.

"We know that the Reaper Saren brought to the Citadel-"

 _"Sovereign,"_ Harper volunteered.

"-indoctrinated him. Does anyone know how it did that?"

 _"Presumably through continuous exposure to Reaper technology, according to Captain Shepard's interaction with the Prothean VI,"_ Vahlen answered. _"Though the precise mechanism is still a mystery."_

"We know the Citadel wants to get their hands on it, seeing how Sovereign gave Udina the mother of all headaches just by being in the area," Hackett continued. "Any information we gave to the Citadel would be used to acquire Reaper tech for their own projects like what Spectre Vakarian told Shepard about. Clearly, in light of her latest reports and activities, the Citadel doesn't understand indoctrination either. And they're working with small fragments of Sovereign. Now if they get their hands on a full-sized Reaper…"

The conference line fell silent as each member contemplated the scenario in full. Predictably, Harper was the first to speak up again.

 _"At the moment, that 'full-sized Reaper,' assuming it is indeed functional, is in the hands of Batarian extremists. I think that neither we nor the Citadel will tolerate that. The question that definitely needs to be answered is where to relocate it."_

 _"Somewhere in dead space where it won't be touched?"_ Udina wondered.

 _"Then we might as well destroy it,"_ the director replied.

 _"Given the dangers of Indoctrination, I don't see how your people could safely study it in the first place. The same goes for the Citadel. How can we ensure that our scientists and engineers who look it over remain immune to it?"_

 _"Sirs, what about remote study?"_ Dr. Core asked, interjecting into the conversation for the first time. _"If we used probes, we could examine it without the need to put living personnel in danger."_

 _"That's a good idea,"_ Summers mused. _"Better yet, what about the Cydonians? They're basically robots, aren't they?"_

 _"They are a highly complex naturally evolved intelligence in hybridized cybernetic shells,"_ Dr. Vahlen corrected. _"Until we understand Indoctrination better, I would prefer to restrict it to remote probes rather than semi-autonomous machines. There's no telling if Indoctrination can affect artificial intelligences."_

"From what I remember about computers, they're hardware dependent," Hackett objected. "Indoctrination can't change hardware."

 _"We use Field-Programmable Gate Array Processors in our AI research,"_ Dr. Core replied. _"Those can theoretically be reprogrammed through electromagnetic interference. I'm not saying that machines could be indoctrinated, but it's a remote possibility. Best to keep it simple."_

 _"The problem with remote study is that we can't conduct as thorough of a study as we could in person,"_ Vahlen continued. _"Or to be more precise, it would take much longer. If only we had a sure way to protect our personnel…"_

 _"Actually, we might."_ Everyone turned to look at Dr. Core's holographic figure.

 _"Care to elaborate on that, doctor?"_ Summers queried.

 _"I believe she is referring to Project Thorian"_ Harper replied. _"It is an in-house attempt to weaponize the spores produced by the life-form Shepard encountered on Feros."_

Core nodded. _"The Thorian said it 'cleansed the taint' in one of Saren's allies, an asari commando subordinate of Benezia's named Shiala. The 'taint' could be Indoctrination. We can go back and do some tests to compare her brain chemistry to that of a normal asari. If it pans out, we could use Project Thorian to 'pre-indoctrinate' our people so they won't become compromised."_

 _"What you're talking about is inoculation,"_ Vahlen breathed. _"Such a simple concept!"_

 _"An intriguing suggestion,"_ Summers commented, _"but for it to work, you will have to develop a process to 'de-indoctrinate' our personnel afterward."_

 _"We are already working on that end,"_ Core smiled.

The hairs on the back of Hackett's neck rose up as he eyed Harper's second-in-command. She caught his glance and her confident smile widened. Suddenly, he had a feeling that it wasn't the director he should be suspicious of.

 **Omega, Guardian hideout**

Butler threw himself out of the way as the flaming wreckage of a car sailed through the first floor window. "Gah!"

"What the hell was that?!" Erash demanded from two rooms away.

"Incoming!" Monteague yelled as the unmistakable chatter of automatic weapons fire echoed through the building.

Vortash flipped the table in the downstairs living room to face forward, blessing his own paranoia that had seen him weld makeshift ballistic plate to the surface. Nearby, he heard Ripper grunt as he set up his rifle, aiming straight out through the front entrance. The rifle barked, and three separate voices replied with screaming.

"No need to aim," the human commented. "They're massing on the walkway. Just shoot, and you'll hit them!"

"If they get too close, just let me know!" Erash called, typing in the arming code to the explosives he'd set up.

 _"We have additional hostiles attempting a sub-level breach,"_ Sensat announced over the radio.

 _"Not much of a breach!"_ Krul roared over the sound of his heavy machine gun.

 _"Monteague, get up here!"_ Melenis demanded. _"Incoming on the roof!"_

 _A three-pronged attack?_ Vortash thought as he ejected the heat sink on his rifle. _How did these guys find our base?_ He spared a glance at Erash, seeing the same thought flash across the salarian's features.

Ripper jerked for a moment as his sights settled again before asking another question. "Where the hell are Mierin and Sidonis?"

* * *

Nord grinned to himself as he threw the young turian into a blood-spattered room. He watched as the frightened whelp picked himself up and looked around, desperately seeking an escape route. And he savored the anguished scream of horror when the turian saw his bloodied and tortured friend.

"Mierin!"

The asari lay slumped in the chair, blood still oozing from countless shallow cuts all over her naked form, half-lidded blackened eyes. Two dried and crusted rivulets of blood trailed down her neck. Her lower legs were a mangled mess, with the odd shard of bone sticking out from the limbs.

"Ain't pretty, is it?" Sidonis tore his eyes away from the sight of his ravaged friend as the krogan gangster hefted an oversized knife. "Torture ain't my thing, really. No point hurting people who can't fight back. Usually."

"…why?!" the desperate plea fell off his mandibles.

Nord shrugged. "The boss wanted to know where you idiots were hiding." The horror deepened. The krogan watched as Sidonis's face turned paler than that of any other turian he'd seen. "Yeah, I'd say your friends are dead meat. The boss doesn't mess around. And now that he's got the crazy bitch with him, we'll take over Omega with no problems."

Sidonis's mouth flapped uselessly in shock, barely hearing any of the words.

"But let me tell you something, whelp," Nord leaned in close. "I didn't come here to take over this rock pile. Where is your boss?"

"I-I…"

"See here's the thing," Nord idly ran a finger over the edge of the blade, noting with a literal sting of satisfaction that it was as sharp as it ever was, "I lost my brother because of your boss. Garm got swept up by the salarians and the turians after that pyjack Vakarian took him down. I don't know if he's dead or not, but that Spectre of yours is going to pay in blood." The krogan grabbed the terrified turian by the arm. "And you're going to bring him to me."

 **Tuchanka, Urdnot Enclave**

"I see you're doing well for yourself," Shepard noted.

"Thanks to your people," Wrex acknowledged. "Hope you don't mind that we're picking ourselves back up, Spectre."

"As long as it's you, I'm fine with that," Garrus replied. "But the Citadel won't be. I know," he held up his hands, "I know, they can go fuck themselves and all that. Just keep that in mind."

"I never really expected to see krogan just sitting around and talking instead of shooting and yelling," Tali muttered.

"Ahem!" Wrex coughed loudly. "Didn't I count when we were on the Butcher's ship five years ago?"

"You're an old fart, Wrex," Garrus commented sardonically. "Sitting around and talking is what you do."

"Great," Wrex grumbled good-naturedly. "All the turians in the galaxy to make friends with, and I get the funny one."

Shepard smirked before opting to focus on business. "So why did you ask for our help?"

The krogan battlemaster handed over a small datapad. "I need you guys to find someone for me," he explained. "You can go anywhere without people asking too many questions, and no one will blink if you say you're looking for him."

"Warlord Okeer?" Garrus whistled. "You want him alive or dead? Last I heard, he was about as welcome among your people as the Alliance is with the Remnant."

"If I wanted him dead, I would have just given this information to the Blood Pack," Wrex answered dryly. "Of course, if you can't take him alive, at least bring back his research notes and archives. He might be hated, but he's still the smartest of us in the galaxy, and my people can't afford to be picky."

"If we do this for you, you'd better keep him in line," Garrus warned. "The last thing the galaxy needs is a krogan warmonger stirring shit up."

"Quid pro quo, Wrex," Shepard said next. "While we do this, keep an ear out for anything of interest, like another group of geth attacking, or impending attacks on human colonies."

"Or escaped Citadel supersoldier test subjects?" Wrex's lips peeled back in a toothy grin as Garrus scowled, irritated that information had somehow leaked out. "You weren't the only one unhappy with that idea, Vakarian. And people who are unhappy tend to talk."

"So much for state secrets," Shepard added, in amusement.

"Laugh it up, Shepard," Garrus growled.

Tali giggled, allowing herself to slip into an illusion of normalcy and forget about what she'd seen in the geth archives.

"Speaking of the Blood Pack, we killed Garm," Shepard recalled. "Don't know if it matters to you."

Wrex grunted. "His brother isn't too happy, with how he vanished three years ago. Swore a blood oath to get even with you, Vakarian, and he took over the Blood Pack to do it."

"Great, him and how many other scumbags?" Garrus griped mildly. "I'd honestly like to see him try."

A sudden chime echoed from his omnitool. Curious, he looked at the display. "Sidonis? Why's he calling me…"

 _"Hello, Vakarian,"_ a guttural voice growled. _"Your friends weren't in a talkative mood, but that doesn't matter very much right now. I'll make this short: you took my brother from me. You took Garm out of our Pack. And now, we're going to take out your pack. We started with the two runts here, and I'm going to end with you. Come and get me. I'll be waiting."_ Without waiting for an answer, the line cut off.

Tali watched in trepidation as an array of emotions crossed Garrus's face: bewilderment, shock, and then horror. He frantically typed in more contact numbers. "Mierin? Erash? Vortash? Weaver?! Sensat?! Answer me!" Unmoved by his demand, his omnitool merely answered with a negative buzz.

 **Omega, Guardian hideout**

"Well?" Jester asked.

"W-we've confirmed eight of them in there," the salarian lieutenant stammered.

"About time," the human grinned. Raising his arms, he formed his trademark green aura and enveloped several large objects. "What? Not having fun?" he grinned at the salarian as the objects sailed into the damaged building. "I know I am. In fact, I'm having a blast!"

The large improvised bombs exploded all at once. The combined and chaotic shock waves tore apart support structures and pulverized the interior. The sections of the roof that weren't ejected straight upward collapsed down into the basement level, burying more than a few of the attacking force who'd of course had no warning at all.

Jester sniffed the air, catching the scent of roasted flesh, before laughing. "Oh they're going to have to glue you 'angels' back together…in hell!"

 **The Normandy, Command Deck**

"Joker, Omega. Double time!" Shepard ordered as she stepped off the shuttle.

 _"Right away ma'am,"_ the pilot answered, recognizing the urgency in her tone.

Garrus numbly moved toward his quarters, not noticing the concerned quarian girl at his side.

"Garrus? Garrus!"

"They're dead…" he mumbled, oblivious to Tali's attempts to get his attention. "They're dead. I let them die…"

"No you didn't!" Tali snapped. "We're going to be there soon! You can't give up on them!"

The turian turned a hollow gaze on the quarian, who flinched at the dead expression in his eyes. "That call came from Sidonis's omnitool. And the others aren't answering. None of them." The flat affect in his voice frightened Tali more than the look in his eyes did. "If they're not answering by now, they have to be dead," he concluded.

"You don't know that!" She pleaded. "There's still hope! We'll make it!"

"There is no hope," he repudiated her in a whisper with brutal logic. "Not with the Blood Pack out for revenge. I got them killed."

At a loss for words, Tali frantically searched her mind for something to snap the turian out of his daze. "Then don't let them die for nothing! They wanted to help clean up Omega! They were the angels, and you're the Archangel! It's your job to avenge them!"

Garrus looked down at his hands for the longest time, and then slid his gaze to his rifle, then back up. His eyes, Tali was glad to see, were no longer empty. They shone with unshed tears, and burned with an unquenchable fury.

" 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.' " Shepard quoted from the doorway, her face set with both determination and concern.

Garrus knew enough about Alliance culture to recognize the religious reference. "God can collect after I do," he spat coldly as he rose up and snatched his weapon. "Time for the Archangel to go to work."

 **Titan, Alliance Marine Officer Academy**

Today was his day. Graduation. After weeks of mental and physical exertion, stressed to the limit, learning how to command, it was finally over. This was the day he finally joined ranks with the Alliance's finest.

He barely heard the announcer over the drums of the drill team or the impact of dress shoes on the ground in perfect cadence. It didn't matter. He knew every word. The audience was hearing an abbreviated explanation about the ordeals of training he and his classmates had been put through, followed by the proud history of the Alliance Military.

His unit reached their place on the grounds and marked time as the other units approached theirs. Finally, the Master of Drill called out the order to halt.

"We now ask that all audience members remain silent as our newest class of graduates take the Oath of Office. During this oath, officers pledge their lives in defense of all citizens of the Alliance, as well as the rights guaranteed to all. Please do not enter the Parade Grounds until after the ceremony is complete. At this time, we would like to welcome our guest of honor, Vice-Admiral Hannah Shepard, Deputy Commander of the Fifth Fleet. We also welcome all other commanders, commandants, veterans, family members, and friends of the graduates who are with us today. On behalf of the Alliance Marine Corps, we invite you to enjoy this ceremony as we welcome our newest brothers and sisters into the service."

As he and his fellow new lieutenants recited the oath in unison, he strained his eyes to try and spot his mother without turning his head, knowing she was out there, watching with pride. Then came the main event, what he'd been waiting for.

"PASS, AND, REVIEW!" the Master of Drill roared.

Slowly, with his unit in the lead, the graduating class began a long oval around the parade grounds, coming around to pass in front of the stands full of audience members. As his head snapped right on command, he finally saw her for the first time in months. It seemed an eternity, even though it spanned a mere fifteen seconds before he faced forward again with his unit. And it finally dawned on him. He was here. He was truly home.

As Vice Admiral Hannah Shepard looked on with pride, Second Lieutenant Kyle Shepard could barely hold back tears as his stoic visage concealed his feelings from everyone around him, knowing his fellow officers felt much the same way.

 **Omega, Entry Checkpoint**

 _Damn, today was supposed to be the day Kyle graduated,_ Shepard remembered suddenly. She banished the momentary guilt as she led the group off the landing shuttle. Time to get down to business.

The entrance was a mess, and deeper inside of Omega, the team could smell smoke and hear screaming.

"Looks like the party started without us," she noted.

"Captain Shepard," a voice called from the side. Several weapons snapped in that direction as their owners beheld an asari in red leathery armor.

"Identify yourself," the red-head ordered.

"I am not here to cause harm," the asari replied serenely, ignoring the weaponry. "In fact, I am the reason the people in this area managed to escape the violence."

"If you're helping the citizens, why are you still here when they've left?" Garrus demanded.

"Because I have been waiting for you," the woman answered, letting her gaze indicate precisely who it was. "I would speak with you, Shepard."

Garrus clicked his tongue in annoyance before lowering his rifle. "I'm going on ahead. Make it quick, Shepard." Without waiting for an answer, the turian sprinted off.

Shepard lowered her weapon while Tali wondered whether to chase after the turian. EDI, as usual, was unreadable. "You have me at a disadvantage," Shepard said coolly. "You know my name, but I don't know yours."

"You may not know me, but I'm certain you know _of_ me," the asari countered. "I am Samara." Only her centuries of experience with people allowed her to recognize the slight flinch of recognition. "You know my daughter, Morinth, and you know she is working with the Alliance. What you should also know is that she is a dangerous fugitive. And I have the task of seeing her brought to justice. Do not lie to me," she continued before Shepard could attempt to protest. "I have all the evidence I need."

"And what might that be?" Shepard asked warily.

"Morinth arrived on Noveria shortly after you departed, disguised as Tela Vasir, an asari Spectre," Samara explained smoothly. "She told officials that she was there to clean up after Spectre Vakarian. Were she independent, she would have had no reason to involve herself in Saren's affairs, or the Alliance's pursuit efforts. Also, I tracked her to the planet Illium, where she likely killed a human as part of her pattern of operation. Five years later, during which she was on the move far more than usual, her trail vanished. And now," she finished triumphantly, "when you recognized my name, and hers, when I mentioned them."

"What do you want from me, then?"

"The Alliance has no business harboring an asari fugitive from justice, let alone one as dangerous as she is. I have enough proof to cause the Alliance a great deal of public embarrassment," Samara noted haughtily. "All I ask, in return for my silence, is that you hand her over to face justice. If you don't, I will bring everything I know to light."

Unbidden, anger rose up in Shepard's chest. "Go ahead," she spat. "Reveal it, and you'll never see Rila or Falere alive again."

Tali flinched an EDI prepared a barrier as Samara's biotics roared to life. "If you dare touch my daughters…" she hissed, her demeanor now completely at odds with before.

Shepard snorted, unimpressed by the display. "It wouldn't have anything to do with the Alliance. Your own government would see to it."

A spark of confusion appeared in the asari's eyes.

"We know all about the Ardat-Yakshi," Shepard continued tauntingly, "and the temple you imprison them in. We know more about them than you do. For instance, we know how to cure them."

The biotic flames died instantly as Samara's anger was replaced with utter shock. "What?"

"See, that was one of the conditions for Morinth to work with us. We would help her find a cure so she could free her sisters. Rila and Falere don't deserve to spend their lives locked up. What kind of _mother_ locks their children away in prison?"

Samara flinched at the venomous tone.

"Anyway, it turns out that Ardat-Yakshi are actually your version of Psionics. Very strong ones. Their power is so strong they can't control it when they meld, which is why they end up killing people. So you know what the cure is? That's right. It's just _training._ "

"That can't be…" Samara breathed, mind reeling at the implications.

"Oh it is. All it took for Morinth not to kill people anymore is for someone to _teach her control_."

"Kelah," Tali whispered in disbelief.

"So go ahead. If you tell the galaxy about Morinth, we reveal the truth about the Ardat-Yakshi. And you know what will happen? The Citadel will take every single one of them away and train them into commandos just so they can say they have something to counter people like me. Except they won't. They don't know the first thing about training psionics. And we know exactly how to kill them. They'll never let Rila or Falere go, and they'll never let you see them again. They'll die on the battlefield, tired, scared and alone. And it would be _all your fault_."

Samara racked her brain for some counterargument, but she couldn't come up with any way to dispute that claim. Grappling with the truth, something jumped out at her. "How do you know their names?"

Shepard leaned in with a glare. "Who do you think she first melded with?"

Nothing could have prepared the Justicar for that. She stood there, gaping, unable to think of any sort of response.

"All this time, you thought Morinth was a selfish monster. The only thing she wants is a family. That's why she agreed to work with us. She wanted help. She wanted her family together again. But you…" Shepard paused. "she doesn't consider you family anymore. You might be her biological mother, but you're not a real mother. Real mothers don't try to kill their children for something beyond their control."

Without waiting for a response, Shepard turned and began following Garrus's trail into Omega with EDI and Tali in tow. Samara shook herself out of her daze, and hurried after them, wondering what to do now that the world she knew had been torn apart.

 _Codex: Psionics (phenomena)_

 _Even after nearly two centuries of study, science still struggles to explain the mechanism behind Psionics. Many have agreed on the common definition that Psionics is the ability to enforce one's will on reality._

 _Supporting this definition is the relative effort for various feats. Nearly all psionics are capable of mental feats such as remote empathy and lie detection. Most can induce certain emotions (psionics in medical disciplines employ their abilities to control fearful or aggressive patients). And stronger individuals can read minds and probe memories. However, there is a vast jump in psionic strength for those who can physically affect reality around them._

 _It is unknown what determines psionic strength, though training and experience have been shown to increase it, as demonstrated by General Marcus Summers._

 _The general is currently the strongest known human psionic, having had the benefit of enhancement by the Gollop device as well as nearly two centuries of continuous training. However, he has gone on (classified) record as stating that younger psionics have the potential to outclass and surpass him, given time._

 **I feel that Morinth was a colossal wasted opportunity for Bioware. They made her into a space succubus living for the next kill instead of seizing on the potential to weave a very interesting story for her.**

 **Her sibling affection is canonical. If she's chosen over Samara, she makes an effort to try and communicate with her siblings, and she shows up as a banshee at the temple in ME3, having been indoctrinated while attempting to infiltrate the place.**

 **How many of you people were surprised by Shepard's reveal? Did anyone catch the hint back in chapter 16? Looks like Liara might have some competition...**

 **And what do you think about Dr. Core's suggestion? Does anyone see the real ramifications and possible dangers?**

 **Finally, for those of you who read a lot of fanfics, how original do my story elements seem? I cringe at how recycled certain plot lines and cliches become in fanfiction, and so I've tried to make this as original as possible (barring shout-outs, the overall storyline, and certain characters). Please let me know what you think.**


	35. Death Comes on Swift Wings

**Garrus goes on a rampage. Can we get the Unreal Announcer here?**

 **Read and Review?**

Chapter Thirty-three

 **The Normandy, Bridge**

Mordin relaxed as the stress bled off his frame before stepping off the elevator. He'd finally had the opportunity to send out his findings over the Extranet to the STG without the ship intelligence intercepting it. And now that his old employer had acknowledged receipt, he could go public, so to speak.

"Ah, Commander. Moment of your time. Urgent discovery regarding Collectors."

Pressly turned away from the bridge display and moved over toward the salarian. "What is it?"

"Communications records from Collector ship. Reconstructed messages," Mordin explained as he handed over a datapad. "Collectors alerted to Alliance military presence by third party."

Pressly's eyes narrowed. "And who is that third party?"

"Shadow Broker. Independent intelligence organization. Implications disturbing."

Pressly's brow furrowed. "Your civilization has a 'third party' independent intelligence organization running around with no oversight?"

"Difficult to track down, insufficient resources to spare," Mordin replied. "Deemed waste of time. Did not concur. Repeated objections. Requested permission to control or eliminate. Denied."

"Well I think they'll approve it now," the officer growled as he turned toward the secure communications room, clutching the datapad.

 **Omega, Slums**

The turian thug frantically scrabbled on his hands and knees to get away from his pursuer. Utter terror gripped his mind as he remembered how his four associates had all died at once from near-simultaneous headshots.

A salarian and two asari in yellow Eclipse armor caught sight of the man. "RUN!" he bellowed. "HE'S COMING!"

The two asari looked at each other in confusion while the quicker-witted salarian ducked behind a wall and scanned down the way the other man had come.

"What's that racket?" a krogan rumbled, stomping out of a ruined residential building. "Get ahold of yourself, welp," he growled as he hoisted the frightened turian to his feet.

"HE'LL KILL US ALL!" the turian shrieked in his face before bolting past, tripping over a pile of debris.

"I'm not seeing anything," the salarian muttered, lowering his rifle. "What was he tal-"

Three wet smacks echoed off the buildings as the three Eclipse members dropped straight down with massive penetrating head wounds. The krogan blinked, stunned. He hadn't even finished processing the fact that the group was under fire before a large blue bolt smashed him in the chest.

The specialized slug of Element Zero had lost enough kinetic energy to remain inside his body, providing it the perfect nesting place for the second stage of activation. A small capacitor in the back of the slug, designed to fail upon impact, discharged its stored amperage into the Element Zero block, generating a pulse of dark energy that exploded the krogan from the inside.

Even against his better instincts, the turian criminal couldn't help turning around when he heard the impacts. He was just in time to stare in horror as the krogan vanished in an explosion of blood and liquefied tissue. Needing no further incentive, the man renewed his efforts to escape. Ten seconds later, he heard a new sound, faint at first, but growing louder at an alarming rate. A chill ran down his neck, and he turned one last time.

From two blocks away, the figure jetted across the artificial horizon, rifle firmly strapped to his back, on blue wings of death. He screamed and held up his hands in a futile attempt to ward off death as the figure rapidly descended upon him. The last thing he saw was the glowing blue baton in his killer's hand.

 **Omega, Aria's hideout**

"YOU!" the angry queen of Omega snarled as Shepard walked into the gathering of henchmen.

"What did I do?" Shepard asked, taken aback.

"You brought him here!" the asari hissed, despite her injuries. "That fucking human psionic!"

Tali's eyes widened behind her face mask while EDI's holographic features reconfigured to show shock.

"A psionic here?!" Shepard gasped.

"Don't play dumb with me!" Aria hobbled over, flanked by several concerned bodyguards. "There's no way you humans would have a psionic running around outside your control!" The angry woman's body began to emit a dangerous blue glow. "You trying to take me down? Is that it?!"

"Aria, I have no idea what you are talking about!" Shepard fired back. "All I know is that Archangel's crew just got wiped out and I'm back to help him out."

"Or maybe you're here to finish me off, now that this 'Jester' asshole trashed me and my men!" Aria staggered, grabbing at her side. "Fuck!" she hissed, waving off one of her guards.

"What reason would I have to do that?!" Shepard demanded. "Why would we want to destabilize you when you're the one keeping the Terminus Systems in line? In case you haven't noticed, the Alliance has other things to worry about."

"You are the only ones with psionics," Aria growled. "Fuck if I know why you'd do it, but you're the only ones who could!"

Tali, EDI and Samara tensed up as Aria's men adopted a more aggressive posture. Shepard exhaled. "What will it take to get you to believe me?"

"You help me take this place back and kill that fucker," the queen of Omega replied coldly, "or the Terminus goes to war."

The Justicar looked on with barely concealed worry as the red-head considered her course of action. _Goddess, I pray she doesn't…_

"I have a platoon of assault troops on my ship," the captain announced. "I can have them deploy and reinforce your people. Then we can start taking this place back."

Aria gritted her teeth. Her distrust warred with the hard reality that her men were far understrength. As much as she would like to avoid getting involved with the Alliance military, she knew deep down that there was little chance of reclaiming her throne without outside aid. "No funny business," she warned.

"We'll need maps of the station and the locations of any assets you have," Shepard noted before hitting her comm. "Captain Silva!"

It took fifteen seconds by her count before the man replied. _"Reporting ma'am."_

"Marching orders."

 _"Yes ma'am!"_

 **Omega, Blue Suns staging area**

The attack was a tremendous surprise, not the least of which was due to some idiot stacking some volatile crates of pure Element Zero near some fuel cells. In their defense, the Blue Suns force had not been expecting any serious resistance after evicting the warehouse of its prior residents, Aria's cronies.

The massive detonation of the supplies being loaded onto trucks tore apart the side of the building and converted nine men into greasy smears on the pavement. Inside the building, a turian squad leader stared in horror as several bewildered Blue Suns members ran to the now-opened warehouse, only to be shot to pieces by rapid precision fire. Shaking himself, the turian reverted to his previous life as a Hierarchy corporal. "Under fire!" he roared into his omnitool. "Second squad, take the alleyways!"

Twelve men sprinted outside across the street splitting into three groups of four. One stayed at the corner and peered around while the other two moved down the alleys. Then a batarian in the first group flew back from a murderous impact to his solar plexus.

"Sniper!" a human yelped.

"Where's the rest of them?!" another called.

The second squad reached a junction in the alley when a blue bolt slammed into the second man in the lead. Once again, a slug of Element Zero emitted a wave of dark energy that mashed the four into pulp against the walls.

The three in the first group saw the blue streak and fired all at once into the distance. They saw a figure leap off the roof of a building far back before vanishing. "It's just one guy?!" a batarian breathed incredulously before he was sent flying into the flaming wreckage of a truck. One moment later, his shriek of agony tore across the area as he clutched at his shredded liver.

"Just one guy?" the turian squad leader repeated dumbly as the radio conveyed the wet sounds of two more men dying in succession. _What in the spirits…_

The third squad looked around nervously as the gunfire from their comrades faded into silence. Then something clattered at their feet. They all stared dumbly at the cylindrical object before their world turned white.

The seven remaining Blue Suns members inside the warehouse looked at each other in fear as the radio echoed with shouts of pain before four loud cracks silenced them. The absence of noise further unsettled them, and each man frantically swept the warehouse, in shock from the rapidity and brutality of the assault.

The door was kicked in and a humanoid figure rocketed in at astonishing speed, bodyslamming into a stack of crates before a blue flash erupted as the figure triggered his pulse shields. As he landed on the ground and rolled, the stack fell over, crushing an unfortunate batarian underneath a load of hoarded food supplies.

The turian squad leader froze when he saw the figure's helmet markings. He'd had the opportunity to lay eyes on the Hierarchy's vaunted Blackwatch soldiers before, and he recognized the unique features and markings that instantly singled out a Blackwatch spec ops soldier from the regular military forces. And as the figure turned to aim his pistol, he saw something else: the rank insignia of a captain. With the last of his men falling around him, he realized exactly who this man was.

Archangel. Garrus Vakarian, Captain (Major select) of Blackwatch, on special duty assignment to the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance group.

Archangel smashed his glowing baton into the last humans' chest, where a wave of blue energy blasted the man into the far wall. The criminal slumped, gurgled in a disturbing manner, and went still as blood began to leak out of every orifice. A hysterical scream of terror and a hail of ineffective gunfire drew his attention to the turian squad leader. He lunged forward, swinging the baton into the support column near the man, which exploded with another blue pulse, sending him sprawling across the floor as his rifle slid in another direction. He stalked over to the man who frantically tried to crawl away from him before planting almost three hundred pounds of armor, weapon, and angry turian on his lower back.

 ** _"WHERE IS THE BLOOD PACK?!"_** he roared through his helmet speakers.

"Ah-I-I-I-I, I don't know!"

 ** _"WRONG ANSWER!"_** The baton came down on the former soldier's knee, another blue pulse from the weapon _liquefying_ the unfortunate limb. The turian howled in agony, clutching at the stump of his leg before a wave of nausea made him bring up his lunch, stained with blood.

 ** _"WHERE ARE THEY?!"_**

The turian coughed, dizzy from pressure injuries and massive blood loss. "The industrial area!" he gasped. "They're in the industrial area!"

The pressure on his back lifted, and then his world flashed blue.

 **Illium, Nos Astra**

Miranda smiled as she lay her hand on the black cloaked figure's shoulder. "And what do we have here?" she purred, noting the slightest jerk in reaction to the unexpected contact despite her psionics freezing them in place. "A spy?"

The woman's mind raced as she internally struggled to break free. She'd thought she'd been perfectly concealed! And why couldn't she move?!

"To answer your question, I'm the one holding you in place," Miranda explained, "and there's no hiding from a mind-reader, Kasumi Goto."

The woman groaned internally. _Psionics, of course…_ "I'll…keep…that…in…mind," she bit out.

Miranda laughed sinisterly. "You might not have a mind to keep after I finish with you. Now do you want to explain why you are spying on the T'Soni residence?"

"Followed…drell…was…investigating human…police…officer…"

Miranda frowned. "Do elaborate," she ordered.

"Shady…connections…to people…killed my partner…Keiji…"

Lawson snorted. _From how you talk and what you're doing, I wouldn't call this Keiji your 'partner.'_ "And let me guess," she continued, "you followed this drell back here, and you got curious. Ever heard of 'curiosity killed the cat?' "

"Kill me…then…" Kasumi growled, her fingers twitching helplessly, "like you…killed…Keiji…"

"You've got it wrong there, Miss Goto," Miranda corrected her. "I'm Alliance Intelligence, and we would have had no reason to go after a pair of thieves in Citadel Space. Since it looks like we might be after the same people, what say you work with me, and I let you go?" A combination of ice-cold hate and relief was her answer. "Good choice."

Kasumi sprang away from the Alliance operative, unwilling to take her eyes off the woman after that stint of utter helplessness.

"Now, I assume there was a reason your 'partner' was killed by these people. "What was it?"

The thief clenched her fist. "We had a job before, and Keiji got a hold of some computer files he wasn't supposed to. All I know is that he looked through them, then told me we had to start running. A few months later, we got baited out on another job, and they captured and killed him."

"Who's 'they?' "

"Some small-time crony," Kasumi answered bitterly. "Works for a guy named Donovan Hock. The little guy isn't anywhere near important enough to know anything, but there was no way I could get at Hock by myself."

"So you started looking at other people," Miranda finished. "Why this police officer?"

"I've been tracking coded messages across the Extranet from mister small-timer to people across Citadel Space. This guy was one of them."

Miranda thought for a moment. There was the possibility that this woman and her lover had simply crossed a powerful crime organization unconnected with her investigation. But her instincts were screaming at her. Something about this was off.

Before she could make a decision, her earpiece beeped, signaling a communique from her ship at the spaceport. "Yes?"

 _"Agent Lawson,"_ an unnamed officer at the other end greeted her. _"New information from Captain Erin Shepard. The attacks on human colonies have been traced to some aliens known as the 'Collectors.' The Collectors were tipped off to the Alliance teams in the Terminus Systems by someone or some organization called 'The Shadow Broker.'"_

"I see," she replied.

 _"Follow up on these leads, and report any useful findings. Advise prioritizing the Shadow Broker."_

"Received, acknowledged and understood."

 _"Copy your acknowledgement. Good hunting, ma'am."_

"Well," she turned back to the thief, "you said you couldn't get to this Donovan Hock by yourself. Suppose you had help?"

"What kind of help?" Kasumi asked warily.

"Unfortunately, I have other things to take care of. But I understand Matriarch Aethyta and Liara T'Soni have commandos and an information network at their disposal. And that drell you followed is working with me. Would that be sufficient for you?"

 **Omega, Industrial area**

Of course they were waiting. Even a deaf man could not fail to miss the slowly intensifying smell of blood as he carved a path through wretched life and limb to his destination. And both vorcha and krogan had strong olfactory senses.

"Good feast tonight!" one vorcha cackled. "Much blood spilled!"

"Tear face!" another chimed in. "Rip filthy humans! Soft flesh!"

"Quiet!" a krogan ordered, glancing around with his Revenant machine gun at the ready. "The Archangel is coming!"

 _"Let him come!"_ Nord called over the radio net. _"He dies today!"_

Tightly focused eyes scanned through a darkened visor, lingering on each group of hostiles. More than sixty krogan and vorcha, all heavily armed, all in an open area. He grimaced slightly before tamping down on his hesitation. One way or another, they were dying today. Nord had crossed a big bright red line. A line made in the blood of his team members.

Something caught his eye, and he zoomed in with his rifle to see it. A plume of gas. For some reason, it seemed particularly significant, and he searched his memory for what it might be. Then he remembered. Drug labs. Much of the stuff brought in from around the galaxy was usually mixed on site, due to degradation of the product over time. For dealers to tout the best stuff, they had to know how to make it themselves. An abandoned industrial yard would have chemicals stored in abundance with which to perform the mixing or cutting processes, or in more rare cases to manufacture the final volatile ingredients that simply could not be shipped at all.

He began forming a plan in his head. Luring a bunch of these jokers over to a poorly maintained and potentially explosive drug lab would allow him a way to injure, if not outright kill, a good number of the Blood Pack soldiers. Not only that, the noxious chemicals released in the explosion would surely disorient or incapacitate them for a time. At the very least, even if they didn't fall for it more than once, he had a way to conceal himself.

With a vicious grin from inside his helmet, he began the slow trip around to the ideal point of execution.

 **Omega, Loyalist rally point**

The best thing that could be said was that Aria's men took the interference of the Helljumpers phlegmatically. No one was stupid enough to challenge soldiers wearing powered armor and carrying energy weapons.

"We need to reclaim this central area," Silva said, stabbing his finger on the map. "If we take the center, we can split these criminals right down the middle. I guarantee my men can hold against the rabble on one side while we clear out the other."

"You only have so many of them," Aria objected acidly.

"Come off it, Aria," Shepard scoffed. "These idiots against professionally trained expeditionary troops with state-of-the-art weapons?"

"And suppose that psycho Jester shows his face?" she pinned Shepard with a glare. "You think your boys can handle him?"

"If they can't, I will," the red-head vowed.

"We should move the reclaim the civilian areas once we secure the central strip," Silva continued.

"Forget it," Aria shook her head.

"They're in the line of fire!" The marine protested. "The sooner we clear out the enemy, the better!"

"This is _Omega,_ boy scout," Aria snapped. "First off, damned near everyone here is a criminal or soldier of some kind. Second, those areas were evacuated already. Anyone who is still there is either dead or terminally stupid. You can even see for yourself: no one is coming out. And if the little people aren't there, I guarantee you that Jester's men aren't there either. Retaking that area is a waste of time."

"You are leaving people to die," Samara noted with strong disapproval.

"You're welcome to go in there and waste your time," Aria retorted, "or you can forget those _few_ and try to help the _many._ "

"I agree with Mrs. T'Loak," EDI interjected. "This area," she gestured at the other side, "is far more important. It is where we should focus our efforts if for no other reason than to deny the enemy an opportunity to organize another attack. This is where the auxiliary docking stations are. We control the primary docks. If we take this, any potential outside reinforcements will be denied easy entry into the station. That means whatever we face on Omega right now will be all."

"And they know all that, which is why they'd be clustered around those areas," the asari finished. "They might not be professional troops, but they aren't stupid."

"Fine," Shepard grunted. "Where to next?"

"Ma'am," a lieutenant called, "you may want to look at this,"

"What?"

"I tapped into Omega's camera network, Shepard," Tali explained as she stood off the side of the portable workstation.

 **Omega, Industrial area**

For the second time, a tremendous explosion rocked the area, earning a dark laugh. _They actually fell for it twice,_ he chuckled as he fired his last special slug at a machine-gun nest, exploding two vorcha and one krogan and bringing the number of hostiles down to thirty.

 _"Hold your ground!"_ Nord snarled. _"He's luring you idiots into traps!"_

Well, that was his cue. He activated the thrusters on his HADES armor, hopping from his perch and angling toward a cluster of six hostiles, all looking the wrong way as he turned and fired his rifle in mid-flight.

 **Omega, Loyalist rally point**

"Holy shit…" Silva breathed, in awe of the display of impossible marksmanship.

"Not bad for his third time using that armor," Shepard admitted.

"He's almost on the other side of the station," Aria noted with grudging respect, "and he got that far in two hours. I bet you he left a big trail of bodies from here to there if what you told me is true."

Tali, for her part, kept silent, hoping that Garrus hadn't bitten off more than he could chew.

 **Omega, Industrial area**

Garrus took several deep breaths as he pulled the now-inert baton from the pulpy mess of a krogan's skull before reattaching the weapon to his armor to recharge. _And then there was one,_ he thought darkly.

Much of Nord's confidence had evaporated as he witnessed the methodical slaughter of his pack. Still, he was no coward. And surely the Archangel's weapons were spent. He would have the advantage.

Garrus pulled out the krogan knife Wrex had given him and twirled it experimentally. Good heft, good balance, and a supremely sharp edge that he'd spent four hours whetting on the way from Tuchanka. He sheathed it, turned and scanned with his visor before locating the last heat signature in the area. Time to end this.

Nord kept his weapon pointed toward the entryway, and tensed as he heard footsteps. They stopped, just out of sight. Then the Archangel appeared, turning the corner and running straight at him. He pulled the trigger, unleashing a hail of projectiles at the turian. But Garrus simply dodged right before triggering a short burst from his thrusters. His dash turned into a rocket-propelled lunge. Before Nord could adjust his aim, he was bowled over by three hundred pounds of armed and armored turian.

Both rolled on the floor before scrambling up. Nord roared and lashed out with a hard right jab. Garrus parried to the side, grabbing the wrist before jumping up and mashing his armored knee down onto the fully extended elbow joint.

The krogan howled, and whirled around to backhand the turian, who merely staggered a few steps. It turned into a charge that ended when Garrus planted a low stabbing kick to the legs, tripping the krogan and sending him to the ground face-first.

Nord rolled to the side as an armored fist smashed into the ground where his ribs would have been. Garrus then launched himself into a tackle that prevented the krogan from getting on his feet.

Trained instincts kicked in. Garrus buried his fist in Nord's right eye, crushing the offending organ, before wrapping his fingers around the optic nerve and jerking.

Nord shrieked in agony and rolled over, pinning Garrus to the ground beneath him before slamming his crest plate into the turian's helmet.

Garrus windmilled his left arm free and jabbed the krogan hard in the lip before also freeing his right arm. Then with a wild swing to Nord's injured side of his face, he forced the krogan off of him.

Both warriors took a moment to reorient themselves. Nord glared with his one good eye while Garrus blinked away the blood in his face from smacking his head on the inside of the helmet. Then they charged each other again.

But this time, Garrus turned into do a back kick, firmly planting his armored heel in the center of Nord's chestplate. Surplus outdated armor versus Alliance mil-spec hazardous environment plating, it was no contest.

Nord's chest erupted in pain as his momentum was harshly arrested by the surprise move. His feet swept out from under him and he landed flat on his back with the wind knocked out of him.

Seizing the advantage, Garrus pulled out the knife and buried it in the krogan's abdomen, using his full body weight to force it through the damaged armor plating.

Nord screamed and flailed at his chest until the turian caught his left arm and rolled him onto his back before viciously wrenching his arm out of the shoulder joint. Then he took the opportunity to jump and land with his knees directly on the krogan's spine. He would be later disappointed to note that this only caused several slipped discs instead of snapping the spine, as if it mattered.

Then he got back up and walked in front of Nord's head and grasped the crest plate with both hands…

 **Omega, Loyalist rally point**

"Oh ancestors…" Tali spun around, squeezing her eyes shut and fighting to keep her breakfast down as the system taps conveyed a screech of terror and pain.

"I didn't know that thing came off…" Silva muttered.

"Usually, people don't fight krogan up close, and they normally use a knife for that." Aria noted detachedly. "It's always messy."

 **Omega, Industrial area**

Garrus took a deep breath, savoring the whimpers of the beaten krogan before slowly unhooking the baton, setting it to max power, and raising the crackling weapon over his head. **_"This…is for my team…you son of a bitch!"_**

 _Codex: Pulse Baton_

 _While shock batons with electrical discharges are intended for riot suppression and non-lethal subduing of hostiles, the pulse baton is far more lethal._

 _Utilizing the principles of Pulse shielding, the weapon generates a blast of dark energy on impact, releasing a shockwave of chaotic gravitational force from the point of impact._

 _This weapon was designed by the Salarian Union and the Turian Hierarchy as a close-quarters anti-armor weapon, as the gravitic waves can pass through armor and cause severe internal pressure injuries to delicate tissue and organs. It was developed solely to counter Alliance advanced armor composites._

 _Codex: Nova round_

 _In the years after Saren's defeat, the Salarian Union took the idea behind the Alliance's expeditionary anti-emplacement Nova mine and made it portable and deliverable from long range._

 _This round operates on the same principles, where a capacitor discharges energy into a block of Element Zero to generate an explosive force._

 _It cannot be manufactured through ammunition mods. This is a specialty round manufactured in extremely limited quantities, and requires a special rifle modification for use._

 _Usage against non-military combatants is illegal, barring Spectre status._

 **The Pulse Baton is somewhat inspired by the Gravity Hammer from Halo and the Power Maul from WH40K. Except it's a lot smaller.**

 **The Nova round is a cross between the Nova mine and the Raufoss Mk 211 sniper round used today by specialized sniper teams. The Raufoss is a combination AP, Incendiary, and Explosive round. Steve Reichert used it to kill three militants behind a wall in Iraq with one shot.  
**

 **But the Nova round is a lot more powerful. It doesn't kill with shrapnel. It liquefies soft targets.**

 **Now just to clear things up with Garrus. When he left Blackwatch to become a Spectre, he went on a special duty assignment. This means he was detached from his unit without being retired or discharged. When he left, he was on the list to be promoted to Major. He can't accept that rank until he is finished with his time as a Spectre and returns to his unit. At that point, he will become a Major. It's not even a question.**

 **But with his contacts and experience gained as a Spectre, he would also be a sure candidate for light bird colonel soon afterward. That would place him under Colonel Zyrene Hesker, the CO of Blackwatch. And when ME3 rolls around and a lot of senior leadership bites the dust, it could potentially make him COLONEL Garrus Vakarian, Blackwatch Commander. Potentially. I haven't decided yet.**

 **And now we see Kasumi in the story. What do you think the raid on Hock's mansion will reveal?  
**


	36. The Fear

**The second Culexus Boss fight. Read and review!**

 **EDIT: Also, someone complained a while back that Jester handled Jona Sideris way too easily. Just remember: psionic. He can read minds and influence them.**

Chapter Thirty-four

 **Illium, Nos Astra**

"Donovan Hock, huh?" Aethyta repeated. "Now there's a character. You're going after the biggest human in the Terminus systems, and you want my help?"

"Is that what he is?" Kasumi asked, suddenly a little nervous.

The asari shook her head. "Hon, you need to learn to scope out your targets before you think about chasing them down."

"You know him," Miranda noted.

"I know _of_ him," Aethyta corrected. "Heads up a big multi-faceted criminal empire. Bribery, assassination, kidnapping, forgery, heists, drugs, slave trade, you name it, he's done it."

"Hock has fingers in most of the Terminus Systems," Thane added. "Rumor is he's had trouble with the Shadow Broker, which is fairly significant considering his current position."

"I take it they don't like each other," Lawson posited.

Aethyta cast a pointed gaze on Liara, who jumped a bit before delving into her laptop. "Have to be on top of things, Little Wing," she said reprovingly. "For big clients, time is money." She turned back to the humans. "Here's the deal: the Shadow Broker's home territory is the Terminus Systems. He likes to keep track of anything and everything. And for the most part, he does. He receives payoffs from everyone because he's that good at keeping an eye on things. But he really doesn't like being shut out of anything."

"And Hock is shutting him out," Miranda continued.

"So goes the rumor mill," Aethyta nodded.

"Hock's senior entourage is entirely human," Liara added. "Most of his local agents and contacts are also. Occasionally, he might hire out other races, but only for small jobs or wet work." She frowned. "He's apparently the subject of a few STG infiltration operations. They've been trying to get more information on his operations, but apparently every single one of their agents has turned up dead."

Thane cocked his head. "I did recall hearing something about Captain Baelus Hrenna being found on the STG's front doorstep."

"I heard that too," Aethyta confirmed. "Caused quite a stir. The STG's greatest infiltration expert with a triple digit success rate suddenly gets express mailed in a body bag to Sur'Kesh. Never failed before then. Didn't it recently come out that he was also on the Broker's payroll?"

"Yes," Liara replied. "That evidence was turned over to the Citadel News by an unknown source. It included bank audits, footage of dead drops, and audio recordings where he was in contact with someone called Nebula."

"That's a statement if I've ever seen one," Miranda commented. "I presume the STG was investigating him because of his empire's anthropocentric preferences?"

"Right in one," Aehtyta confirmed.

"What does that mean?" Kasumi asked, feeling left out.

"Think, hon. A large criminal empire staffed by humans headed up by a human inside the Terminus Systems would be a perfect proxy organization for the Alliance to back up. It might seem a little too obvious, but it's still possible. The Council is worried that the Alliance is in fact behind Mister Hock." Aethyta smirked. "Obviously, Miss Lawson is going to tell us that's not true."

"Naturally," the agent mirrored the expression.

"I don't get why they haven't acted against him more openly though," the thief protested. "They know he's a criminal, and they have pretty good proof he murdered their agents. Why don't they take him down?"

"For someone who makes a living in the underground, you sure are a babe in the woods," the asari sighed.

"The Citadel can't act openly against any Terminus organization for fear of provoking all the independent powers into uniting against them," Thane explained. "In this case, they see double the potential threat. If Mr. Hock is backed by the Alliance, it could draw them into a conflict as well."

"But what about his business? Couldn't they expose him?" Kasumi argued.

"He doesn't directly do business in Council territory," Liara answered.

"There must be some way to take him down!"

"Not going to happen, hon," Aethyta shook her head. "The Council's been down this road before. The Hegemony used to do the same thing. They were involved in about 90 percent of all activity in the Terminus Systems before the Alliance decapitated their government. Everyone knew it, but no one did a thing because they risked war with the Terminus. These criminal groups know they're outcasts, and they can only rely on each other. The problem is that there's so many of them. And they're smart enough to band together if they get attacked."

"Tch!" Kasumi growled to herself, loathing the feeling of helplessness.

"Not so fast though," Miranda commented. "The Alliance could care less. We've already demonstrated to the galaxy how hard it is to fight us. We would have a lot less to lose in a war with the Terminus."

"And the savvy ones know that," Aethyta warned. "Which is why they'd threaten the Citadel in order to get their protection. You humans can't fight off the whole galaxy."

"You'd be surprised," Lawson replied ominously. "We don't have any real reason to do so, but if you found something on Mister Hock that implicates him in action against the Alliance, you can be sure we'd move in on him. Naturally, that's easier said than done."

"I've done impossible missions before," Kasumi retorted, her eyes shining with devious wrath.

 **Omega, Eclipse holdout**

No matter how she tried to steel herself, to regain control, to free herself from fear, it still pervaded her being. Jona still remembered vividly the pure terror that the powerful human inspired in her mind. Worse, it was bringing back long-suppressed instincts born of desperation and a desire for self-preservation. She ingratiated herself to him, currying his favor to earn a reprieve from his presence, just as she did for her long-dead master.

The power she'd accrued as a biotic warrior, the power she'd longed for and sought ever more of as a security blanket against the fear and helplessness of her past, was now ironically her greatest curse. Jester did not give a damn about her fellow test subjects. He saw them as worthless and mindless fodder, and cast them off. But her, he kept, because of that same power. Bound by fear. She held no illusions as to what he would do to her if she ran off from him. Like her master before him, he would find her.

But unlike that dead batarian, she had no hope, not even the slightest prayer, of killing him.

All she could do was carry out his orders. She was to make sure that Eclipse held steady in the face of the onslaught. The humans were coming, and so was that wretched turian, Archangel. None of them would show any mercy. None would be inclined to spare her.

Had she possessed her senses, she might have recognized the fact that death at their hands would be a mercy kill.

 **Omega, Central Nexus**

"Sarge?"

"Yes corporal?" the soldier replied, not taking his eyes off his fire lane.

"Why the hell are we even here, sir?" the junior NCO asked. "I mean this isn't our territory. This is Citadel territory. Why do we give a flying fuck about a bunch of criminals killing each other on an asteroid at the ass end of the galaxy? It's their own damn problem."

"Ours is not to wonder why, son," the sergeant replied.

"Yeah, I know the other half of that song too, sir."

 _"Firefly, this is Six. We're coming up,"_ the radio squawked.

"Copy sir. Rendezvous point is clear. No sign of the Spectre yet."

Ten minutes later, the squad heard the footfalls of the command group.

"Still quiet sir," the sergeant reported. "Recon still hasn't reported any contacts."

"Tali, anything?" Shepard looked at the quarian, who shook her head.

"I still can't access the systems on that part. They were probably manually shut down."

"That's one way to put it," Aria interjected sarcastically. "Or you could say they slagged it, which is probably more accurate." The asari pointed to a smoldering building. "That's where the communications hub was."

"Smart of them," Captain Silva noted.

"When you're finished admiring their fieldwork, you can get back to clearing these fuckers off my station!" Aria snapped.

"Just waiting for our recon boys to report back," Silva retorted.

"Contact!" A number of heads swiveled in the direction of the speaker. "High velocity, big mass effect signature…it's one of ours, sir."

"Garrus," Shepard commented before moving off with both asari and the quarian in tow.

"Sir, if you don't mind me asking, why are we here?" the sergeant queried.

"Far be it from me to question orders from the top," the captain replied, "but I think there are two possible reasons. One, Captain Shepard thinks of the Spectre as a friend. Two, this is a goodwill mission. The Spectre has friends in high places, so helping him out on something like this might be important later on."

"Fucking politics," the sergeant growled.

"That's why you should never become an officer," Silva grinned.

"She's here," Garrus said without preamble as he landed.

"Who?" Shepard asked.

"Jona Sideris."

"Oh, _that_ little cunt?" Aria's lips peeled back in a dangerous grin.

"How do you know?" the red-head wondered.

"I asked a few people," the man's tone made it clear what that had entailed. "They were even kind enough to tell me where she is right now."

"I wonder where that rat lieutenant of hers is, Sayn," Aria's grin turned downright vicious.

"Probably hiding nearby," Garrus replied. "I also know where Jester is running things from."

"Somewhere with a crapload of scum between him and us?" Shepard guessed.

"Near the auxiliary docks. That complicates things."

"He'll probably run for it if we clear out Eclipse," Silva interjected as he joined the group.

"Yeah. We'll have to hit both areas at once."

"Agreed. Time to split up," Shepard noted.

Aria's expression turned to displeasure. On one hand, she really wanted payback against Jester for taking her throne. On the other hand, Jester had clearly demonstrated his superiority in combat, and she did have a score to settle with Jona Sideris.

"Tell you what," she began, "when you see Jester, break his ribs for me. It's only fair to return the favor."

"You're taking Sideris, then?" Garrus asked.

"This is asari business, right, Justicar?"

Samara looked distinctly uncomfortable as Aria locked eyes with her.

 **The Olympus, Contractor Quarters**

"We meet again, Admiral Hackett," Dr. Tygan said as he stood from his temporary workstation.

"Doctor," the admiral shook his hand. "I came to deliver a new potential contract opportunity to the Cydonia Institute."

"I see," Tygan's face twisted in puzzlement. "But I confess to being curious as to what this involves if the chief naval officer of the military is making the offer in person."

"Let's say that this requires discretionary release," Hackett answered quietly, letting his eyes do the talking.

Tygan pulled back slightly. "Well, I assure you that we will fully abide by the laws governing classified material."

"Just make sure you can trust your people," Hackett noted cryptically before pulling out a file, opening it, and laying it on the desk. "Some of your colleagues have already been pre-vetted by Intelligence in preparation for work on this newest project," he continued, deliberately tapping a finger on one spot on the top sheet while silencing Tygan's unspoken questions with a hard gaze. "We would prefer if you could keep the information limited to those select individuals for security purposes."

"We may have to partially brief others on staff," the doctor replied, returning his gaze to the one name the admiral had pointed to on the paper.

"Already considered that, doctor." Hackett held up a datacard. "Debriefs for each level of classification and staff. I trust you to make the proper decisions. Not for use on a non-secured terminal. Find a computer with no network access of any kind before you review it. Standard procedures."

"I understand, sir," the doctor acknowledged as the admiral turned to leave, utterly flummoxed with the strange meeting. This had been nothing like his previous experiences with the military, and the admiral had behaved quite strangely.

He shook it off. The most likely place for answers was the datacard, and he wasn't about to open that here. Not after the look Hackett had given him when talking about information security. But there was one place he could be absolutely sure it would meet the requirements. Coincidentally, that place was owned by the same colleague the admiral had pointed out on the paper.

Tygan slid his hand across the keyboard of his computer, accessing the secure communications app, before keying in the second party. Then he let the application make the connection while he turned to lock the files and datacard in his secure storage unit.

 _"Hello Richard,"_ a curt female voice greeted him.

"Doctor Shen," Tygan returned. "We have a new project from the military. I'll brief you on the details as soon as I get back."

 **Omega, Eclipse Forward Position**

The salarian lieutenant cast a nervous eye over the lines of men and women, hoping against all odds that he could find some way out. Ideally, he would escape with his position and authority in Eclipse intact, though that possibility seemed very remote indeed.

Everyone was on edge. Aria T'Loak was not known for anything resembling restraint when angered. The most infamous example of her wrath was when she got wind of some sleazeball turian who'd plied his charms on her daughter, Liselle, and when that failed, attempted to kidnap the girl.

The man had vanished, along with his entourage of sapient traffickers, only to be displayed in various stages of live vivisection for an entire year on the Extranet. Some hangers-on who'd been fortunate to share an audience with the Queen of Omega whispered of hearing faint screaming from the lower levels of the Afterlife club, suggesting that decades later, her victims were still kept alive.

The salarian shuddered involuntarily, recalling an adage that advised against getting on the wrong side of ANY asari in general. Those with a millennia to live have a long time to master the art of torture. But then again, if others stories were true, Aria might be the least terrifying. She was only an asari commando. The Archangel had demonstrated his capacity for station-clearing brutality with nothing more than high-tech armor, a steady trigger finger and a blue stick that could shatter protocomposite barriers. If his latest victims in the aftermath of his rampage into Blood Pack territory were any indication, he wasn't slowing down.

And that made him even scarier than an asari. Any soldier or mercenary worth their name or rank knew that the best way to fight an asari was to drag out the fight. Most commandos relied heavily on their biotics to make up for their physical frailty and lack of endurance. It exhausted their metabolisms and forced their race as a whole to prefer blitz and ambush tactics. But all the other races could simply keep going, as the Archangel had been for nearly four hours of continuous combat.

Still, he wasn't a super-soldier. That status was reserved for the one enemy that the salarian considered the worst option of all. The Butcher of Torfan, the poster child and exemplar of the Alliance military. She never stopped, never faltered, was incredibly vicious and violent towards her enemies, and was known to experiment or "play" with her prey. All of those behaviors could be attributed to the Alliance in general. Everyone had read up on the history and conduct of X-COM during the Ethereal War. They knew of the horrific experiments and terrible risks and gambles and dangerous augmentations used in desperation to win the war. The Torfan Example was another reminder of how vicious and vengeful the humans could be. Capture by the Alliance could arguably be the worst fate imaginable.

A sudden noise caught everyone's attention. The Eclipse soldiers aimed their weapons into the alleyway. "Who's there?" the lieutenant demanded.

"Well well, if it isn't Sayn," a familiar voice replied.

"L-lady Aria," he stammered as his forces shifted nervously.

"You know that if your boys and girls pull the trigger, you're not getting off this station alive," Aria called. "Not while the Alliance is blockading the docks."

"Fuck!" an asari trooper whispered. Sayn shared the sentiment. Somehow, Aria had Alliance military aid, and NOBODY wanted to fight them.

"But if you just walk away, you might get through this one, Sayn. You're not the one I'm here to kill."

"You've got to be kidding," Sayn retorted. "We're part of Jester's forces. We had a part in attacking you. Why would you let us go after we provoked you?"

"Because I know you," Aria's voice flowed back. "You all want to make it out of this. You guys were forced into it. I hear that Jaroth wanted to reject your little team-up, and Jester got him killed. You're a smart man, Sayn. You're a practical man who can keep that bunch of killers and mercs in check. I like that in you. The only person in Eclipse I plan to kill now is Jona Sideris. That bitch and I are due for a little talk."

Sayn grimaced as the Eclipse soldiers looked to him uncertainly. Psychotic or not, Jona had been the central icon and founder of Eclipse as an organization. They had started as a group dedicated to targeting slavers before Jona had gone off the deep end. But now, she was…a liability, he admitted to himself. She had made numerous powerful enemies, including the Queen of Omega herself. She was not a sane person at all. And her tendencies had often led to the deaths of certain new members who'd for one reason or another pissed her off. No, it was time for new leadership.

"Weapons safe," he ordered. With hesitation, the Eclipse troopers nonetheless complied.

"Good choice," Aria's voice came from directly behind him. He whirled around in shock to see her grinning at him while shrouded in a powerful blue aura. "I knew you were a smart man, Sayn."

"Do not waste her generosity," another asari voice warned. Sayn turned back to see an asari in red leathery armor, calmly standing in the middle of a number of Eclipse mercenaries while disregarding a few nervous rifle muzzles pointed at her. "Leave now, lest I be forced to kill you all."

* * *

Not even the presence of several asari Culexus thralls comforted her. Even with these nearly mindless and totally obedient comrades to defend her, she was still gripped with terror. The enemy was coming to kill her. If she ran, her mast-no, her warden Jester would kill her. She could only imagine the pain that would befall her either way.

The looming sight of the enemy approaching nearly set her off. Aria T'Loak, a woman who'd beaten her in the past, and a Justicar.

"No, no no nonononono!"

"Wow," Aria remarked. "I heard the salarians fucked you up, but I didn't know it was this bad. Last time, you at least had a spine for me to break."

"You've come to kill me, you've come to kill me!"

"Child," Samara cut in, "there are things far worse than death."

"You'll hurt me just like HE did!" Jona rambled, her biotic aura beginning to grow with her agitation. Her thralls slowly gathered around in a protective manner. "You'll enjoy it! You'll laugh, and you won't stop!"

Aria's slight smirk vanished. "Goddess, what did they do to her?"

"They said they'll protect me! You'll never hurt me again!" the thralls began growling and hissing while Jona's aura flared to new heights. "I won't let you! I WON'T LET YOU!"

With a roar, the thralls lunged forward, propelled by a powerful blast wave of biotic energy.

"Ugh! Get the fuck away from me!" Aria snarled, compressing a large quantity of air into a blue-hot grenade before throwing it into the face of a feral turian thrall. The make-shift grenade flared and unleashed a concussive wave that tore apart his body and shoved three others behind him back toward their master.

Samara swatted away a feral asari thrall, easily weathering the wave of energy. The krogan thrall behind it glowed blue briefly as she grabbed it by the shoulders before turning to smash the crest plate and hump onto the asari lying next to her. Right before impact, the blue aura faded, restoring full mass and inertia to the krogan. A loud combined crack echoed across the clearing as the asari instantly expired from a crushed chest, and the krogan suffered a snapped neck.

"Get away from me!" Both women looked back just in time to see the deranged asari mercenary propel herself at high speed at Aria. Aria only had time to cross her arms and flare her aura in an attempt to block before a terrifically powerful blow sent her sprawling across the ground.

Samara grappled with a batarian thrall before engulfing him in another blue aura and swinging him like a bat, again allowing the aura to fade just as the Culexus subject smacked into Sideris at a velocity exceeding twenty meters per second.

But Jona didn't even flinch. Her barriers simply blocked the man's body, forcing the unfortunate batarian to snap in half around her. Meanwhile, Jona had been preparing her own attack: a biotically enhanced straight-jab that _accelerated_ mid-punch.

The justicar had never felt such a powerful impact. Her own biotics were enormously strong, on par with several matriarchs even in her matron stage. But this punch tore straight through her barriers like nothing. Only her last-second usage of a mass-reduction aura on Jona's fist prevented her from a suffering a crushed ribcage.

"You won't hurt me!" Jona growled as she recovered from that sudden burst. "You can't hurt me!"

"Oh please, that was a freebie," Aria scoffed as she cracked her neck while rubbing her bruised forearms. "The pain… **is just getting started!** "

Now it was Aria's turn to strike fast. Jona howled in pain as Aria appeared behind her while mashing another air grenade into her back. The explosion flash-burned the deranged asari and propelled her forward into Samara's waiting arms.

"Athame forgive me for what I am about to do," the Justicar whispered as she grabbed Jona by the head. Gritting her teeth against the pain in her chest, she slammed Sideris's face into the protocomposite ground with her mass-reduction trick. Then she hopped back one step before lunging and kicking the asari on the chin as hard as she could while once again reducing her mass.

Jona's spine arched like a bow as her body sailed back towards Aria. The Queen of Omega created another air-grenade and threw it. But Jona's body froze in mid-air before emitting yet another massive pulse of biotic energy, prematurely disrupting the grenade.

 ** _"I'm not weak anymore!"_** she screamed as she cast her glowing white gaze on her two opponents. **_"I can hurt YOU now! I'LL KILL YOU!"_**

 **"Come and try, cunt!"** Aria roared back.

Jona zipped down from her aerial position right at the Queen of Omega. But this time, Aria was prepared. She dodged backwards out of the way while using her hands to create a much larger air-grenade. Jona was unable to stop herself from smashing into blazing hot biotic sphere. The heat disrupted her control of her power, forcing her to plow herself into the ground directly on top of a destabilizing explosive.

The explosion flung her upward only to be caught by Samara. The Justicar had jumped up to meet her. She once again reduced Jona's mass before spiking the asari downward. But she then enveloped the Eclipse founder in a different aura. This one tripled her mass while maintaining her enormous velocity. Samara enveloped herself in that same inverse aura before accelerating herself downward.

Jona smashed into the protocomposite hard enough to partially pulverize the surface. Before she could even attempt to get up, Samara landed with three times her mass, heels first on her spine.

As she stepped off the fallen asari, she heard a new sound. It took her a moment to recognize it: the sound of a child crying. Instantly, she was reminded of the last time she'd encountered it, when Morinth had been tearfully begging her not to take the children to the temple.

"…why?" Jona whimpered weakly through a coughing fit. "…why do…they hurt me?"

"Because you're a fucking cunt!" Aria answered darkly, striding over and hoisting the partially paralyzed asari up by the collar. "And like I said, **_the pain is JUST GETTING STARTED!_** " She punctuated her statement with an ominously glowing fist.

"Aria, please," Samara said.

"What?!" the angry Queen turned her glare on her temporary comrade.

"This child has suffered enough," the Justicar continued. "She has had a difficult life. She has known nothing but pain, through no fault of her own. She deserves mercy."

Aria snorted. "Mercy? Did you forget she's a sadistic psychopath turned Council supersoldier? And before that, she was terrorizing the Terminus Systems and killing off her own crew?!"

"She is broken," Samara replied flatly. "She never went past the level of a child. Do you intend to torture a child who has known nothing else but pain and fear? A child who has never had any real control over her life?"

Quiet agonized sobbing was the only sound that echoed in the area while both asari had a standoff. Finally, Aria huffed through her nose and threw the broken woman to the side. "Fine," she growled before moving off.

Samara moved toward Jona's trembling form. "Hush, child," she whispered, stroking the woman's face. "You don't have to hurt anymore."

"…you…can make it stop?" Sideris asked, looking at her with hopeful eyes clouded in pain and tears. It was clear she was delirious by now.

"Yes, child," Samara affirmed. "No one will ever hurt you again."

"…thank…you…" was the gurgled reply.

Samara had killed many criminals in her centuries of life. She had pitied them all for their poor choices. But this wretched girl with a horrifying past had never had any real choice or control in her life. With a gentle smile, she laid her hand on Jona's chest, right over her heart. "Sleep now, and find peace…in the embrace of the goddess."

 **Omega, Unknown location**

At the bidding of the ancient alien intelligence, the thralls made their way deeper into the station. Hopefully, in the chaos above, no one would notice their presence. And when it came time for the humans to withdraw, they would join the exodus of the fearful to the planet of Shanxi.

And then finally, they would create a weakness in the humans to exploit. After all, even the strongest empire crumbles from within.

 _Codex: Biotic Specialties_

 _The strongest and most feared of the Citadel Races fighters include those asari who have mastered biotics to a degree beyond the average commando. Biotic Specialties are techniques often unique to those individuals that afford them a massive advantage in power and combat ability over any unfortunate enough to draw their ire._

 _Matriarch Benezia was famed for her usage of Biotic Lightning, a chaotic and focused ranged attack that caused tremendous damage to armor and soft tissue alike._

 _Aria T'Loak employs the Biotic Flare. It is an ability that allows her to efficiently deal with any number of enemies either at range or in close proximity._

 _Jona Sideris, the Founder of the Eclipse Mercenaries, was able to augment her combat capabilities by rapidly accelerating her limbs to increase the speed and strength of her blows._

 _Matriarch Aethyta is known to use the Biotic Strength technique, storing biotic energy in her body and releasing it right at the moment of impact to do severe internal damage to both hard and soft targets._

 _The Justicar Samara displays an affinity for mass-reduction and mass-increasing fields, enabling her to engage enemies of significantly greater size and/or strength on equal footing._

 **Yeah, sorry, no Jester this chapter. His fight is NEXT chapter.  
**

 **Fleet Admiral Hackett is getting involved in the spy game now. Say hello to An-yi "Lily" Shen and Richard Tygan again!**

 **Side note: I have gotten some reviews questioning the wisdom in the Alliance's decision to allow humans to leave their territory or allow intragalactic trade and business relations with the Citadel. The reason is this: Espionage.**

 **In today's world, the easiest disguise for a spy or intelligence officer is a businessman. Travel a lot, talk to different people, operate in many different countries, be familiar with "creative expenses" (read, bribery). It's the simplest cover in existence. Everyone knows it, but it's very difficult to do anything about it without jeopardizing international relations.**

 **Same principle in this story. People who immigrate to the Citadel or the Terminus include intelligence agents under cover. Businessmen and women cross the borders of Alliance Territory repeatedly, bringing information back that the Alliance wants.**

 **The enemy you know nothing about is the worst enemy of all. The Alliance knows this.**

* * *

 **In keeping with the name of the chapter, the main theme is Fear.**

 **I am of the school of thought that Fear is the most powerful and primal emotion of all. Fear drives survival instinct, and is the basis for a number of emotions. Greed could be the fear of lacking means. Anger could be the fear of lacking control. Love could be the fear of losing a person.**

 **Fear plays a big part in how the world works. Militaries exist out of fear of attack by foreign forces. Politics exists to assuage fears and reduce chaos out of the fear of the harm it brings to different nations. Economics is a massive game of engendering and exploiting the fears of the consumers, manufacturers, traders and executives. Cities and countries exist because of fear. People banded together out of fear that by not doing so, they would have a reduced chance of survival.**

 **Tom Clancy writes "Wars are begun by frightened men." I consider that to be true. No self-sufficient nation goes to war. Only a nation with people fearful of the consequences of not going to war would allow it.**

 **Fear is a tremendously powerful motivator. People are more willing to act out of fear than out of desire. Often, people think of fear as a weakness. But it can be a strength.**

 **Jona for example. She feared her past. She wanted to never suffer like that again. She gained great biotic power and influence as a mercenary out of her fear of not having it. It drove her to do great things. It made her a dangerous opponent.**

 **Like everything, fear in moderation is a positive influence. It makes you consider your actions carefully. It drives you to act. It motivates you. Everyone has their fears, great or small. Everyone subconsciously can use those fears to steel or strengthen themselves, to drive themselves to do great things.**

 **But there is a reason fear is generally considered a weakness. It often makes people irrational, hasty, and brittle. Face someone with their worst fears, and you can break them.**

 **And with that, I'll leave you guys with this ominous question: what is Captain Erin Shepard's worst fear?**

 **Hint: if you go back and read the early chapters, you might find the answer.**


	37. Strings

**For Ace Combat fans, this chapter might hit hard. It almost made ME cry when I wrote it.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Thirty-five

 **The Normandy, Laboratory**

Mordin's brow creased as he looked over the file he'd received from one of his old colleagues. " 'Jano Avyeska found dead. Unusual mechanic of death. Partial indication of large bore weapon. Multiple inconsistencies. Autopsy record follows.' Curious," he muttered to himself.

As a personal favor, his old friend had been tracking down one of the last living Hegemony political figures with ties to the batarian assassin Taniks. But it appeared the man had already been found and terminated. That was mildly troubling insofar that the batarian still had access to impressive information sources.

Of greater concern was the fact that Taniks had absconded with a sonic rifle, yet the mechanism of death was far more energetic than that design was capable of. Skilled assassin and gunsmith though he might be, Taniks was not known to possess the skill to replicate or modify energy weapons.

"Implications disturbing," Mordin commented into his personal recorder. "Indoctrination unknown factor. Possibility of imparting advanced knowledge. Would suggest indoctrination capable of active transfer of information. Hive minded surveillance capabilities? Possible, if not probable. Termination of Avyeska suggests remaining self-control. Personal connections unique." He paused for a moment before continuing on another line of reasoning. "New weapon? Modified? Possible, unlikely. No connections to Alliance. Hegemony Remnant implausible. Lacks current technical expertise. Shadow Broker? Consideration for later."

With a few commands, he turned to face the primary monitor, now displaying the banks of photos and videography from the autopsy and the scene of discovery.

 _"…been pulling out fragments of cartilage and bone from the mixture of cerebral, skin and muscle tissue. None are above half a square centimeters in size. If not for the lack of bruising in the contiguous tissue, I would have thought this case to have involved a particularly large individual, possibly a krogan, wielding a particularly large blunt object as a weapon. However, fragment trajectory, a lack of weapon marks and the missing bruising indications are almost indicative of an explosion occurring at point blank range, with the contact point being just above the left ear._

 _"As of this time, I have no idea what weapon could have caused this. Lab sample analysis shows no traces of explosives. And there are no large anomalous pieces from an ammunition block that could account for a large bore weapon, which would be the only remaining alternative that I am aware of. I admit that I do not have the highest level security clearance, so should there be anything of a classified nature in existence, it may very well account for the inexplicable damage this man suffered. Apart from that, I am at a loss."_

 _"…unable to find any forensic evidence. The asari servant who went to the local police was so hopped up on substance that her interviews and testimony are even more unreliable than usual. No one apparently heard anything. Considering the location of the victim and how only he suffered any sort of damage, as well as the asari girl's close proximity at the time, I think that this involved some kind of ranged weapon. With the Medical Examiner's report, we traced a few likely positions for a marksman to fire from. But we found zero evidence of a weapon discharge. No chemical traces, no weapon indentations or scuff marks from the recoil, nor signs of disturbance anywhere…"_

The recordings stopped, but Mordin continued to stare at the screen. He didn't care about conjecture of what had transpired. What concerned him was the weapon used. Of course it was a ranged weapon. Taniks was a sniper, and one of the best assassins in the galaxy. The problem was reconciling the damage with the weapon used. Sonic rifles, while a brand new innovation, were incapable of that level of damage. Plasma rifles, laser weapons, geth particle weapons, all those energy weapons inflicted heat damage.

Wait. Mordin blinked as he backtracked. Geth particle weapons. An accelerated stream of particulate matter. It would produce heat due to the continuous series of particle collisions transferring huge amounts of kinetic energy to the impacting surface. But it would also produce shock damage. Much more than plasma. What kind of weapon would produce nothing but shock damage, with no physical evidence other than the victim? The closest analogue was when people died from the blast wave of a large explosion. Tremendous pressure in one direction…

"Concussion weapon?" Mordin whispered in awe. The dream of directed energy weapons. No physical trace, little energy radiated off as heat, nothing more than what would essentially be a beam of pure force. Such a weapon, if properly focused and ramped up, would blast straight through armor and have little to no trace. Like the sonic rifle, the firing position would be untraceable. Theoretically.

Mordin stopped himself from reactivating the recorder. This was something much too sensitive to utter on the ship. He'd probably already said two too many words as it was.

But before he could enter in the next command for his terminal, he was jolted off balance as the ship lurched.

 _"General quarters! All hands to battlestations! General quarters! All hands to battlestations!"_

"Attack?!" Mordin breathed as he straighted up. Someone in the Terminus was straight up picking a fight with a state-of-the-art Alliance warship? Who would be so stupid? "Remnant? No. Little presence around Omega. Syndicates? Can't be. No significant gains…"

 _"This is Commander Pressly with a sit-rep. We are under attack by unknown Terminus forces. We have friendlies on station, and they're counting on us to provide them with a safe extract. We need to keep the enemy contacts away from the station. Chances are, this is an attempt to either reinforce hostile forces aboard or an exfiltration operation. Top priority is isolating the primary and auxiliary docking stations. We have numbers against us, but we're all used to that. Stay cool and remember your training. This is what we do. Let's show them how we do it!"_

 **Omega, Auxilary Docks**

"Well well," Jester called, "the Archangel arrives. Heard you had some fun with Nord on the way over."

Garrus clenched his mandibles inside his helmet, but didn't respond beyond leveling the barrel of his rifle dead center of the human's face.

"And what do we have here?" the dark-skinned human whistled. "The Butcher of Torfan herself. Niiiiiiice."

Shepard scowled, a dirty feeling coursing through her under the man's gaze.

"Two military legends here for little old me? I'm flattered."

"Get over yourself," Shepard snapped. "You're just a highly disruptive psionic. I don't know how you managed to get this strong, but I can figure that out later from your dead body."

"There's that little assuming thing, princess," Jester riposted condescendingly. "You're assuming that you'll kill me. And you know what happens when you assume things?"

"Like I said," Shepard growled, "you're just a highly disruptive psionic. **And guess what?** " Her body exploded into purple flame. " **They trained me to kill people like you!** "

Garrus was already moving, rocketing sideways and firing a hail of rounds at the man while Shepard blitzed straight ahead.

The man swung his left arm out carelessly, releasing a flare of green that batted away the relativistic bolts of material. His right arm came up, along with a glowing chunk of the protocomposite ground. Unable to move around it in time, Shepard instead plowed through it, letting it crumble off her purple shroud as she renewed her charge at the strange human.

But that short delay had bought Jester enough time to chamber his left fist before jabbing at her torso. Just as his fist made contact with her aura, another green flare exploded, overpowering her shroud for a split second. And for the first time since her training, Shepard found her psionics being overwhelmed by another force. In the short millisecond-long interval that Jester's power held sway, she found her momentum being completely reversed as she flew backward and skidded on the ground.

She hauled herself back up, ignoring both the astonished gaze of Garrus and her internal organs protesting the sharp reversal of inertia. Her aura reignited, more dense than ever, and she charged forward again with pure murder in her eyes.

Undeterred, Jester instead cackled as he sent a hail of both protocomposite shards and metallic scrap at the angry supersoldier. Then as Shepard managed to close in on him, he summoned a large lump of scrap with his right hand, and swung it at her.

Shepard snarled as she bashed it to pieces with her right arm before focusing her aura into a solid lance around her arm and stabbing with it. But her eyes flew wide in amazement as _Jester caught her attack._

With a slight tightening of his left hand over her fist, his green aura crushed her lance. He leaned in with a sinister grin. "Like you said," he noted mockingly, "you're just a highly disruptive psionic. **_AND GUESS WHAT?_** " His own form erupted in green energy. " ** _THEY TRAINED ME TO KILL PEOPLE LIKE YOU._** "

Shepard locked eyes with the psionic madman, feeling the undeniable strength in his grip, so similar to her own, and knowing exactly what she was now dealing with. "Jaeger…" she breathed.

 **Omega, Alliance Rear Element**

"Say what?!" Silva yelped into the comm.

 _"Those tangos on board likely have reinforcements from space,"_ Pressly replied. _"That's why EDI moved most of herself back to the ship. Until we get control over the surrounding space, you're on your own down there. We can't send in the Arkbird or the backup to wait around and evac you guys. They're needed to run interference."_

"God damnit, this went pear-shaped in a hurry!"

 _"Sorry captain. Sit tight until we call back."_

"And if you don't?!"

 _"We will, captain,"_ Pressly assured him. _"Just keep your head on straight, marine."_

"Fuck," Silva growled as the comm signal cut out. "Okay boys, that was our ride saying there's no more rides because things are getting loud outside the station. They got a job to do, and only they can do it, so we don't need to bother worrying about it. Our orders are to clear out any last bit of resistance from these Triple Threat assholes, and to keep them away from the docks. Stay alive!"

Tali felt more than a little out of place as the marines shouted an acknowledgement before moving off. "What do you want me to do?"

Silva paused. "Take EDI's shell and see if you can't use it to tap into the space battle comms. I'd still like to know how deep in the shit hole we're going to be."

Tali nervously glanced at the deactivated gynoid. "I-I'm not familiar with the hardware though…"

"Kid," Silva snapped, ignoring the quarian bristling indignantly, "right now, you're the best thing to an expert I can spare. All the real experts are either too far into the field, or back on the ship. And no offense, but you aren't cut out for the kind of fighting we handle."

"I'll try, but no promises," Tali warned, smarting somewhat from the 'kid' comment.

 **Omega, Auxilary Docks**

Garrus interrupted the stare-down by jumping in and smashing his baton into Jester's chest, sending the insane human flying backwards. Pausing to make sure that the man would take time to get back up, he shook Shepard by the shoulder. "Hey! You alright?"

Shepard blinked a few times before her scowl returned. "No," she hissed. "I won't be alright until I find out where this fucker came from!"

Garrus yelped and dived forward, rolling out of the way of an engine block ripped from some dock equipment. "Hngh!" Shepard's arms rippled as she caught and halted the momentum of the piece of machinery. "Not looking for spare parts right now," she said, tossing away the slightly crimped engine block with a massive boom.

"Oh you want the whole hog?" Jester replied with his usual shit-eating grin as he stepped out of a dust cloud, "Why didn't you say so?" A large two and a quarter metric ton starter cart sailed in from behind him before shredding itself in mid-air and creating a flying cloud of both heavy and razor sharp metal parts.

Garrus clicked his baton to max power and thumbed the control for his pulse shield. Then he slammed the baton on the ground, adding its own repulsive force to his shield and scattering the lethal rain of metal away from himself.

Shepard merely stood her ground, forming her aura into an impenetrable barrier that even withstood a half-ton alternator smashing itself to pieces at twenty meters per second. But then something else plowed straight through. The purple wall shattered as a suddenly armor-clad Jester bowled Shepard over.

"Shepard!" Garrus called, launching himself high up, shouldering his rifle, and firing several well-placed shots into the scrap serving as armor around Jester's legs.

"Ugh!" For the first time, Jester's smug expression faltered as he stumbled from the pain. He turned to face Garrus. "Time to clip an angel's wings!" he snarled as his right hand glowed green.

Garrus heard two loud screeching sounds from his shoulders. "Aw fuck…" he groaned just before the wing pods were ripped off with psionic force. "Gyaaaah!"

"Hyeagh!" Shepard yelled, taking advantage of the distraction to ram her arm, sheathed once again in a purple drill-shaped aura, into Jester's scrap-clad side.

"Gyeh!" Jester's aura flared, blasting Shepard backward once again and showering her with a rain of scrap metal.

Garrus triggered his armor pulse just before he hit the ground, cushioning his fall a great deal. It still did not prevent the explosion of pain as he landed on a protruding piece of debris with the small of his back. "…ow…" he squeaked in an unusually high pitched voice.

Shepard shook her head, forcing the double images in her vision to solidify after being nailed in the temple with an engine cowling. She had no time for anything else, as the same piece of metal smacked into her from behind. Jester was pulling all the scrap back towards himself, carrying her with it. Caught off guard as she was, she had no time to react before Jester slammed a metal-encased fist deep into her abdomen, driving her straight down into the protocomposite ground.

"You're starting to piss me off," Jester growled, attempting to grind Shepard further into the concrete analogue.

Shepard coughed, spitting a wad of blood into Jester's face. "Funny," she whispered, " **you took the words right out of my mouth!** "

 **The Normandy, Bridge**

In a stunning display of either suicidal overconfidence or devotion, the large group of new contacts were throwing themselves at the ship. Whether or not the enemy commanders realized exactly who they were picking a fight with, they were succeeding in pushing the ship away, making it more difficult for them to maintain control of the dock areas.

Pressly was glad to see that the enemy was paying quite a heavy price for it. EDI was a genuine artist with her two Firebird drones. He'd lost count of the number of double hits with one shot she'd made. There was a slowly accumulating pile of dead ship hulks as a testament to her superb aim.

There were a surprising number of enemy fighters. That was truly astonishing. Dr. Solus had informed him upon joining him on the bridge that the identification markers pegged these ships as independent mercenaries or members of the big three Terminus gangs. From what he'd heard in the briefings back on the Olympus, he had been under the impression that barely met militia standards. Still, they didn't last very well against the Firebirds or the two Skyrangers.

He frowned. Honestly, he wasn't that happy about deploying the spare dropship for fighter defense, even with the situation being what it was. It placed both at risk. If both Skyrangers were destroyed, he had an entire platoon of Helljumpers plus his commanding officer stranded deep in potentially hostile territory with no easy way of extraction.

"Give me an assessment," he ordered.

 _"Three of the five cargo transports have been destroyed,"_ EDI reported. _"The other two have sustained minor blast damage. Six of the eight gunships are out of commission. The other two are being sheltered by that one frigate analogue. All missile boats have been wiped out. The Skyrangers are taking care of the mine-layer, and…the other frigate is now dead."_

"Ship status."

 _"Well sir, that last fighter sweep with missiles took our shields to thirty percent,"_ Joker called. _"Forward pods expended and reloading. Power plant is at eighty-two percent and holding steady. We're still circling out of effective range of these idiots, but I still don't want to get in too close and let that frigate get a shot at us."_

 _"Hey you want that damn thing taken care of? Consider it done!"_ Chopper announced over the comm.

Pressly rolled his eyes. And there he went again. Lt. Col Davenport was infamous for being a daredevil pilot, having racked up a long string of reprimands that somehow never precluded him from gaining rank. Pressly had talked to his last CO, another flight school colleague, who'd flat out told him that writing him paperwork would just be a waste of time.

 _"Chopper,"_ Nagase chastised him, _"You're taking too many risks!"_

 _"You always say that,"_ Davenport laughed. _"Yeahooo!"_

Even Pressly couldn't keep a slight smile off his face as he observed the tactical display. A sigh came afterward from Chopper's long-suffering wingmate. The icon for the daring colonel swept into a sharp turn that brought his flight path parallel to the much larger craft. _"Oh that looks important!"_

 _"Whoa!"_ Joker exclaimed.

 _"Yep, it sure was!"_ Chopper cackled.

 _"Jesus, what the hell did he hit?!"_

 _"According to the EMF scans, it seems he caused a catastrophic power overload in the frigate by shooting the section containing the capacitor banks for the kinetic barriers,"_ EDI noted. _"The power surge most likely fried the drive core safeties and possibly interacted with the control computer, causing a runaway reaction until failure."_

 _"You see that, Nagase? You catch it?"_

 _"Yes, Chopper,"_ the other pilot replied calmly. _"You know that Blaze is going to yell at you again for doing that, right?"_

 _"Ah, it's fine. He can yell all he wants. I'm still alive."_

At that moment, the last surviving gunship made a terrifically unlucky shot. A loud boom echoed through Chopper's line.

 _"Dah! Damn!"_

 _"Chopper? Chopper are you alright?!"_

 _"Agh, well that just rattled me pretty good. Let's see…shit, left side control surfaces are all messed up."_

 _"Chopper, they're not messed up! They're GONE!"_

Pressly leaned forward at that as the bridge crew all turned toward the speaker.

 _"Gone? The hell do you mean they're…oh…"_

 _"Colonel Davenport, your ship is reporting a rapid loss of engine power, and you are drifting towards the station at almost five hundred meters per second. I recommend you eject,"_ EDI called.

 _"Listen to her,"_ Nagase urged. _"Bail out, Chopper! Please, bail out!"_

Pressly's knuckles whitened as he gripped the railing with deep dread. The rest of the crew stared transfixed at the speaker, waiting for the man's reply.

 _"…I can't,"_ he replied with a fatalistic tone. _"the electrical system's all messed up. The pod won't blow. Ejection system's probably not working either."_

Pressly ran his mind through the only possible escape scenario, knowing that with an approach velocity of 1800 km/h, what little deceleration he might gain from jumping out the back in an evac suit wouldn't make a damn bit of difference.

 _"Don't give up!"_ Nagase begged. _"Chopper! Keep trying! Chopper!"_

 _"Heh,"_ Lieutenant Colonel Davenport laughed sadly as he made his final transmission, _"I'm gonna miss that voice…"_

Pressly closed his eyes and bowed his head as the icon for Arkbird II winked out of existence, and the relative silence on the bridge was shattered by a horrified scream. _"CHOPPER!"_

 **Omega, Auxilary Docks**

The weight on her chest vanished as Jester was sent flying by the shock of the impact. Shepard also found herself being pushed by the blast, only to suddenly be pulled back. In her attempts to grab onto something, she saw the cause of the event.

The auxiliary dock they were next to was _gone._ The airlocks were obliterated by something smashing into them. Only her distance and the safety mechanisms slamming down were saving the three of them from being sucked into space from the vast quantity of air rushing out. When the gale ended, she climbed to her feet and surveyed the area.

Jester glared at her, slowly pulling out a shard of metal from his left lung, and showing no sign of impairment as he crumpled the industrial grade metal like newspaper.

There were no words now. None were needed. This was a fight that could only end in one way.

Then a loud crack echoed across the way, and Jester was thrown sideways with a second large hole above his aorta.

"…did you forget about me, you prick?" Garrus growled, allowing his rifle to drop from his right hand while his left gingerly caressed his abused back.

Shepard slumped, allowing the tension to bleed out of her with a laugh. It was a bad move as it turned out, bringing a sudden eruption of pain and coughing. "It's always your damn back," she managed in between hacking up globs of blood.

Garrus's pained-yet-amused look turned to concern as Shepard dropped to a knee, clutching her lower abdomen. "You okay?"

Shepard paused to look up with a deadpan stare.

"Right, stupid question."

Faint strained laughter caught both their attention. "…heh, you idiots…don't know anything…"

"The fucker's still alive?" Shepard asked.

"Not for much longer, it looks like," Garrus noted.

"…you dance to their tune," Jester continued weakly. "…heh…we all do. We're just puppets…tangled in…strings."

"Strings?" Shepard asked.

"…guess I should thank you though…" the man said. "…you cut me free…free…"

Shepard's eyes widened as the dying man's body began to glow green one final time. "Get back!" she hissed.

"…I had strings…"

With a display of willpower, Shepard hoisted herself up and grabbed the startled turian by the arm.

"…but now…I'm free…"

"Get to cover!" the red head barked as they dashed away.

"There are…"

Garrus slowed down slightly as he turned to look back in rising panic.

"…no strings…"

The green glow now seemed to be as bright as a sun.

 _…on me…_

One final explosion rocked the area. Garrus and Shepard flew apart and smashed into different piles of debris before being buried in a wave of repulsed scrap.

For almost five minutes, there was no movement. Then Garrus pulled himself out of the pile, groaning as he nursed several sub-armor bruises.

"Shepard? You there? Shepard?" He looked at another large pile and began pulling it apart. Finally, he uncovered the female supersoldier.

"Captain Silva? This is Spectre Vakarian. If you can hear me, get a medic over here now. Shepard is down. Repeat, Shepard is down.

 **Bekenstein, Hock Mansion**

Donovan Hock grumbled to himself as he was pulled out of the air car by his aide and escorted indoors to his private office. Sometimes, he wondered if his job was worth all the little inanities he put up with, dealing with small timers, contractors and all the various Terminus officials who required a price for their silence.

When he opened his office door, he stopped dead, seeing a familiar woman with a troubled expression on her face. He turned and gestured to his aide that he required privacy, which the little man complied with, bowing out of the office and closing the door.

"What?"

"Jester is dead," the woman told him.

Hock blinked, before composing his thoughts. "Who killed him?" he demanded.

"According to our contacts, the Archangel returned to the station, along with Captain Erin Shepard."

"Hmph," Hock snorted. "Of course, it would have to be her."

"Our people are waiting for instructions," the woman continued. "Omega is completely trashed. Aside from Aria T'Loak, who Archangel helped to prop back up, there's a huge vacuum in terms of services offered."

"Well I suppose it's now or never," Hock mused. "Have our people establish themselves now. Seize as much control over the station as they can. With the three gangs wiped out, we should have a near-monopoly on Omega after this. I assume that they were wiped out, Roe?"

"Last I heard," Roe answered hesitantly, "the fleet we 'hired' to back up Jester was annihilated to the last. That new Alliance frigate really is something. But as to the groups on the station, Eclipse is still together, but Sayn is pulling us out. For now, they're writing off Omega. The Blue Suns and the Blood pack on the other hand are already gone. We can thank Archangel for that."

"Well at least we have that going for us," Hock commented with satisfaction. With at least two of the three principal gangs in the Terminus severely weakened, he could extend the control that his organization possessed much deeper into the Terminus, worming his way into places he'd deemed too difficult to acquire beforehand. "Keep me posted,"

"As long as you're paying," Roe smirked before leaving.

Hock waited until the Eclipse commander-turned-double-agent shut the door before he moved to his desk. He entered in a long password from memory, and then took a special chip and slotted it into the computer before accessing a hidden program. The doors locked down and the secondary security system in his office engaged. No one could enter or leave until he shut down the program, and no signals could go in or out except through the hidden QEC unit wired to the terminal.

A new panel on the screen opened up and various indicators turned green until the entire board was green. Then a big logo appeared: a red and black hexagon with an eye on the top and a four-pointed-star on the bottom.

Hock selected a person from the contact list, and waited patiently for five minutes until the line was completed.

"Yes?"

"Hello Petrovsky," Hock greeted. "We have a loose end that needs tying up…"

 _Codex: Element Zero boosted explosives_

 _The base property of Element Zero, the emission of Dark Energy upon electrical stimulation, has proven to be a great boon in nearly all areas of technological development, not the least of which is military applications._

 _The practice of adding Element Zero to large explosives can, under certain conditions, increase the efficiency by a factor of three. It is a delicate balance to reach with chemical explosives, however. As it responds to electrical stimulation much faster than the reaction rates of some chemical explosives, too high of a concentration can disperse the explosive before it all begins to react to the detonator._

 _There are more strategic applications for this: the addition of Element Zero to nuclear weapon designs. While pure fission designs have a maximum theoretical yield-to-weight ratio of only 6 kt per kg of bomb material, thermonuclear weapons are three orders of magnitude greater, sitting at a theoretical ratio of 6Mt per kg. But with the addition of Element Zero to add a tertiary containment force to counter the internal pressure buildup in the pit, or nuclear core, that ratio is further increased twice over, to a final theoretical 600Mt per kg of material._

 _This ratio falls far short of the sci-fi "planet cracker warhead," but can do wonders for the use of nuclear weapons in space combat. As combat takes place over relativistic distances, nuclear explosions must be quite large in a vacuum to have a significant chance of destroying or damaging an enemy ship._

 **And now we get our first look into the Exalt rabbit hole.  
**

 **I came up with the idea for boosted nukes because the scale of space combat and the range of modern nukes always bothered me.**

 **The first two ratios are not made up. That's what I've learned in my own research. I was looking for a percentage reaction efficiency number for different weapon designs, but the only ones I've ever seen is 1.3 percent material reaction for the Little Boy, and 15% material reaction for the Fat Man. The most efficient weapon design in terms of yield to mass is the US B41 design at a theoretical 5.1 kt per kg. The most efficient weapon tested is the US MK 56, at 4.96 kt per kg.**

 **Naturally, when anything new is discovered, the first two things people try to use it for is porn, or weapons. Element Zero should be no different.**

 **The short version: nukes take subcritical material, make it supercritical to create a massive buildup of energy in the form of gamma rays, and try to contain that buildup for as long as possible before containment failure.**

 **The first method of containment is physical. The second is inertial, which is present in implosion-type and thermonuclear type weapons. Element Zero, in a proper design, could substitute for the explosives in the implosion design and generate more force by converting gamma rays to electricity, stimulating a greater release of dark energy, and so on until the containment fails.**

 **Ultimately, the main objective in nuke design is to prolong the containment of the buildup.**

* * *

 **Finally, I have gotten some reviews decrying how OP the Alliance is. I admit it. They are OP. They are essentially what you'd get when you mix the logistics and training of the US military with the doctrine and ruthlessness of the USSR. And the Citadel is basically a third-world power.**

 **But I could have made them even more OP. I could have allowed the Alliance to develop Wormhole cannons: guns that could fire through wormholes across interstellar distances with absolutely zero possibility for retaliation fire.**

 **And that would have completely broken the story. The Citadel still does have numbers going for them, and the Reapers will find a way to even the odds. I can guarantee you that.**


	38. Compromise

**Sorry for the wait. Transition chapters are not my strong point. But at least a couple questions get answered in this chapter.**

 **EDIT: Point of clarification, the Shepard family consists of Vice Admiral Hannah Shepard, Captain Erin Shepard, and Marine Second Lieutenant Kyle Shepard. Kyle was kidnapped when he was young, and rescued back in chapter five.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Thirty-six

 **Omega, Auxilary Docks**

"God, what a mess," Engineer Gabriella Daniels sighed, setting down the blowtorch and wiping her forehead with her sleeve.

"Ah, ye might want to keep that down, Gabby," her coworker warned, nodding toward Lieutenant Colonel Nagase as he manhandled another torn section of armor plate off the wreckage.

"Colonel Nagase saw his death spiral in, Kenneth," Daniels noted, "and not on the Tac Screen. I don't think overhearing us can make things any worse for her."

"Well that kind of talk won't make them better either, Gabby."

"How much longer?" Captain Silva asked, sidling up to the pair.

"Hour tops," Gabby replied. "Half to make the last cuts, and half to extract the colonel's body in one piece, hopefully."

"Well, let's make sure of it. Captain Shepard wants us off and away from this place ASAP," Silva glanced back at the wounded officer. "Something got her panties in a wad."

"Didn't think she's the type to wear that garment," Donnelly chuckled, searching for his next cutting point.

Gabby snorted. "You'd be surprised."

"You know something that I don't?"

"That you've got a hankering for tough feisty redheads, of which our captain is one?"

Silva and Donnelly stared at her, stunned. "Oy," Donnelly's mouth slowly curled into a grin, "is that jealousy I hear, woman?"

"Sounds about right to me," Silva added with a smirk. "Feeling somewhat inadequate there, Engineer First-class Daniels?"

"Hey, if you want to, in your own words, 'plow the fields' with a woman who can dent C-class armor plating with her bare hands…" Gabby smiled wickedly, seeing Kenneth's face pale, "be my guest."

"Think I'll pass," Donnelly muttered, shuddering to himself.

"Quite a bit of damage here," the medic noted as he fussed over the now-conscious Shepard.

"I never would have guessed," Shepard replied acidly, wincing as the man tightened another bandage around her exposed abdomen. "I thought the sharp stabbing pains and the river of blood I coughed up were normal occurrences."

"Well that's supposed to happen once a month for you, right?" Garrus joked, only to recoil as Shepard's glare hit him with an almost physical force. "Please don't break my back," he apologized quickly.

"I want to break _someone's'_ back," Shepard growled, her eyes momentarily flashing purple. "That guy, Jester, I want to know exactly where he came from, and how he was so strong. Someone dropped the ball somewhere."

"Shepard," Dr. Chakwas walked up with two escorts and an aide in tow, "we have finished gathering all the genetic material samples we need. Now I just need to get back to my office and upload the samples so we can check against our database to find out who this man really was."

"You think it's in there somewhere?" Garrus asked, skeptically.

"Every individual with psionic potential or abilities is monitored as a matter of security," the doctor explained. "Those with such abilities are not allowed to leave Alliance Territory except under escort or military assignment. Our government offers significant incentives to stay in order to make more forceful methods unnecessary."

"Harsh. Understandable, but harsh."

"And you only need to look here to see why they do it," Aria interjected as she walked up with Samara in tow. "Only the Alliance has psionics, so only they would know how to deal with them."

"Well if you catch them off guard, a gunshot works fine," the turian patted his rifle. "I thought you'd be with your guys, retaking the station."

"Got a few things to take care of first," the asari crime lord explained, handing over a datapad.

"What's this?"

"Everything you need to find Jedore Ysanne."

"And why would I want to find Jedore Ysanne?" Garrus queried.

"Because she's Okeer's current employer." Aria smirked, enjoying Garrus's surprised expression. "I don't like owing people. I owed Wrex a favor, and I owe you two favors. So I'm clearing out my debts. Wrex gets his krogan scientist, you get Jona Sideris's body, and Shepard gets to keep Jester under wraps. I took the liberty of erasing every last bit of footage on the station involving him, and Sayn is under my thumb at the top of Eclipse. I can make sure none of them will talk."

"And what do you want back?" Shepard asked warily.

Aria's smile turned cold. "I want you and him to keep your problems far away from Omega. I can overlook this one, but the next time either the Alliance or the Citadel's leftovers fuck things up for me, you're going to find out exactly how much I can fuck you back."

"That's not really fair," Garrus objected. "The Alliance wouldn't be nearly as badly hurt as the Citadel."

Aria sniffed. "Then maybe those wrinkly-ass matriarchs back on Thessia should have listened to me, or Matriarch Aethyta, back when we called for a stronger and more independent military force. At least the Alliance takes their safety seriously."

"Find an outside alien threat that almost wipes out your civilization," Shepard advised dryly. "That's what worked for us."

"Pass," Garrus replied.

"Shepard," Samara spoke up, "may I ask you something?"

The red-head looked at the justicar with a neutral expression. "She doesn't want to talk to you," she answered.

"Please. I need to see for myself," the woman pleaded.

"And I'm telling you right now, Morinth doesn't want to know you or see you. Not that I can blame her. You've spent the better part of a couple centuries trying to kill her for wanting to be free. You took away her sisters and locked them up just for existing. You've ripped your family apart. All she wants to do is put it back together, but without you."

It was all the asari could do to stop herself from flinching at those words. "I understand that I have made mistakes. Please allow me try to make up for them."

For the longest time, Shepard almost glared at her in silence. "Fine, I'll try and get her on the line later. Don't say I didn't warn you."

"Am I missing something here?" Garrus interjected. "Who's Morinth? And how do you two know each other?"

"Long story."

 **The Olympus, Secure Communications**

Hackett keyed in his personal authorization code and waited until the line fully activated.

 _"Hello sir,"_ Shepard greeted.

"You look a little worse for wear," the admiral commented.

Shepard went into a coughing fit. _"I never would have guessed,"_ she rasped, wiping blood from her lips.

"Was that blood?!" Hackett demanded.

 _"I'll live, sir,"_ the woman grimaced.

" _You_ might, but I'll have to answer to your mother for anything that happens to you."

 _"We ran into an enemy psionic, sir."_

Hackett's eyes narrowed. "Explain."

 _"He called himself 'Jester.' Don't know who he really was, but he was strong, about as strong as I am."_

"And he did that to you?" the admiral asked with something bordering on disbelief.

 _"He was augmented,"_ Shepard clarified. _"He had to be. He could block my power, and he was strong enough to trade with me up close. If I didn't know better, I would have sworn he was a Jaeger."_

Hackett's eyes unfocused, glaring at something in the distance as he turned that information over in his mind. "I presume you have evidence that we can use."

 _"Dr. Chakwas took DNA samples. We might be able to identify this guy through our database on psionics."_

 _Only if these people didn't delete all traces,_ Hackett thought to himself. "It's a start. Have the doctor get a profile on the samples and send it up. Anything else?"

Shepard's face darkened. _"Have someone notify the Wardogs that Lieutenant Colonel Alvin H. Davinport died in combat."_

The admiral's jaw tightened. He took note of the agonized expression on the woman's face. "Are you doing okay, Erin?"

 _"No,"_ the red-head hissed, almost to herself. _"He died under my command. He died saving me."_ Shepard looked up from the floor of her ship and right into Hackett's eyes through the line. _"If his ship hadn't crashed into the docks, Jester would probably have killed me."_

"It's not your fault, Erin," the aged officer told her, before rushing his next words to forestall the self-induced guilt-trip. "From the sounds of it, you had your own concerns on the ground, and he was involved in a battle outside of the station. What could you possibly have done on the ground to save him in the depths of space?"

 _"I'm a Jaeger!"_ Shepard snapped. _"I'm supposed to be the strongest one out there! I shouldn't have needed saving! He shouldn't have had to die for me!"_

"You are not responsible for his death. You didn't fire the shot. You didn't crash his ship. You didn't give the order. Stop beating yourself up. You are an officer in the Alliance Navy and a Predator," Hackett admonished. "You knew people will probably die under your command. The best you can do is make sure they didn't die pointlessly." Silence greeted him. "You did _that_ , right?"

 _"Yeah,"_ Shepard admitted, _"we got the bastards. Pressly, that is."_

"Good," Hackett nodded. "Now report to the Citadel. We're going to send them a message. I'm getting tired of losing people because they can't keep their house in order. And so is General Summers."

Shepard nodded acknowledgement before speaking one last time. _"Does it ever get easier, sir? People dying under your command?"_

Hackett sighed. "That depends on if you want it to be easier."

 **Unknown location**

The ship captain growled in annoyance as he slapped the comm panel in his quarters. "What?" he snarled.

 _"C-Sec ship has us. They're going to board,"_ his first mate informed him.

 _Great,_ the smuggler captain thought, _more lost time._ "The usual countermeasures then. Make damned sure our men don't say a thing while they inspect us. We lose this cargo, all our heads roll." The humans paying for their services were not known to be the most forgiving types.

Five minutes later, everyone aboard the ship heard a dull humming, followed by the clanging of a boarding airlock connection. The captain and his first mate stood at the doorway as it opened to reveal three asari, a turian and two humans in uniform.

"Is life on those ships so boring that you have to hassle innocent merchants?" the other batarian asked loudly.

"Considering how long your rap sheet is, you barely qualify as innocent," a human fired back as he brushed past, carrying a powerful sensor unit.

"This isn't Citadel territory," the captain said calmly, "so I wonder on what grounds did you board my ship?"

"Intelligence that your customers are people of ill repute," the turian lieutenant answered sternly.

"Military intelligence, then?" the first mate grinned. "We all know how accurate that usually is."

"I don't ask questions about my customers," the captain shot a warning glance at his subordinate. "All I care about is their willingness to pay my fee for hauling their cargo."

"The last part I can buy," the asari in charge replied, "but not the first. You've been operating in the Terminus long enough to know better than to do business with the really dangerous people. And to do that, you need to ask questions."

"Fine, yeah I snoop a bit, but just enough to find out if they're the kind of customers who pay people with credits or bullets."

"And I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell us who some of the latter customers are?" the turian breathed sarcastically.

"A couple of humans on my ship have a saying: snitches get stitches. I have to look out for myself."

"We have a witness protection program," the asari pointed out.

"More like a witless protection program," the first mate muttered.

"I've known a few old friends who went to you people," the captain added. "Last I heard, they were sold out by the Shadow Broker. I think I'll take my chances."

The turian and the asari shared a dark glance. It was not news that there were traitors and mercenaries within C-Sec who held greater loyalty to money than their sworn duty, but it was a dark stain on their own personal honor that such scumbags existed.

 _"Captain Anaya?"_

The asari held a hand to her earpiece. "Go."

 _"It's a dry hole, ma'am. No contraband. All they have is what's on their declared manifest."_

"Acknowledged. We're pulling out."

"Saw what you needed to see?" the first mate smirked.

"I'm keeping my eye on you," the turian warned as he turned to head for the airlock.

Anaya waited until her four other officers joined her before turning her back on the ship. She had no idea why Matriarch Aethyta had asked her to let the ship go, even with contraband, but the woman had told her that doing so would allow her people a chance to curtail some other illicit activity. While she was skeptical of that claim, the matriarch had advised her to have her people discreetly mark the cargo for tracking purposes.

She shrugged. Whatever Matriarch Aethyta was doing wasn't really her business. She'd probably find out soon enough anyway.

The captain waited until his sensor officer told him the C-Sec ship had moved off before ordering max speed toward Bekenstein. This delay was already going to cost him. He did not want to find out at what point he would go from getting stiffed on his fee to becoming a stiff.

* * *

After an hour of sitting still, she felt safe enough to decloak in a dusty maintenance corridor of the ship. "I hope they're actually going where they say," Kasumi grumbled as she stretched like a cat, working out the stiffness in her back.

"This crew is experienced enough to know that hiding their destination just draws attention," Thane answered from his perch in the ceiling. "Miss T'Soni went and checked their travel logs for the past three years. They have never strayed from their declared route of travel."

"So we wait until they land, escape while they're down, and make our way over to Hock's mansion, right?" the thief asked.

"Somehow, I doubt it will be as easy as you put it," the drell replied dryly. "A crime lord of his reputation and standing would have impressive security. He isn't limited by government ethics laws, and would probably have hired the best."

Kasumi snorted disbelievingly. "I've seen the 'best' the underworld has to offer. Keiji and I used to break through that stuff for fun."

"Remember that breaking into a place is much easier than breaking out, and the important part is to effect a clean escape," Thane warned, "something you and your partner failed to do that one time."

Kasumi fell silent at the rebuke, ruminating the loss of her partner. Then she looked up. "Well, I won't make that mistake again," she hissed.

 **Citadel, Alliance Docks**

They watched as the female officer marched stiffly down the ramp, followed closely by six marines carrying a covered stretcher, and then by the red-haired senior officer and the turian Spectre.

Sparatus observed nervously as the procession stopped directly in front of General Summers and Ambassador Udina, who were also flanked by marines from the Embassy Garrison. He and his colleagues could easily guess at the reason for this ceremony. The following diplomatic proceedings were sure to be very unpleasant.

The lead officer bore a patch on her arm that matched the larger image on the flag covering the stretcher. It was clear that she and the deceased had been part of the same unit. Even from where the Councilors stood, they could all see the reddened eyes and the tear tracks on her face. But her expression was perfectly stoic as she saluted the general, who stiffly returned it without a word.

The eight marines on either side of the two Alliance representatives moved to flank the bearer detail, forming an honor guard around the dead soldier. Together, the uniformed mass began marching toward a large bus chartered by the Alliance Embassy. During the entire event, not a single word was spoken.

General Summers performed a picture perfect about-face. Tevos flinched badly at the sight of his stormy expression. Thankfully, the ambassador put a hand on the general's shoulder, drawing a long glance that ended with the most miniscule of nods.

"His name was Lieutenant Colonel Alvin H. Davenport," Udina began as Shepard and Garrus sidled up alongside the two. "He was one of the shuttle pilots for the Normandy. He died courageously in combat, at Omega station, in the Terminus Systems."

"He died saving our lives," Garrus added. "If he hadn't crashed into the auxiliary docks where we were fighting, Shepard and I wouldn't be here."

"We are truly sorry for your loss," Sparatus offered tentatively. "If there is anything we could do to compensate…"

"You can start by cleaning up your own damned messes," Summers rumbled.

"General, please," Udina sighed as Sparatus shrank into himself slightly. "What Marcus is talking about is Project Culexus and the escaped test subjects."

Sparatus groaned. _Here we go again…_

"We discussed possible reparations in our last meeting," Valern reminded everyone, "as well as the fact that the human colonies the escapees attacked were independents outside of our control and protection."

"That doesn't excuse the fact that something your people created went off the rails and attacked them!" Summers snarled, his eyes beginning to glow dangerously.

"According to Spectre Vakarian, we could level a similar charge at your people," the salarian retorted evenly. "Omega was thrown into chaos because one man started stirring the pot weeks ago. One psionic human, to be exact. Considering how powerful such individuals are, one can only wonder how such a man escaped from your custody and jeopardized the state of underworld affairs!"

"When Captain Shepard learned of the man in question, she didn't wash her hands of the affair and say it wasn't the Alliance's problem, even though she would have been well within protocol to do so. We are investigating the matter internally."

"And so it is with Project Culexus. We have not been idle behind the scenes, general."

"But we clean up our messes. Shepard didn't leave this Jester to continue wreaking havoc. And she's also been cleaning up your mess as well, since your people are apparently unable to do so, _in your own territory!_ "

"General!" Udina called sharply. "I can appreciate that we are all under stress because of this matter, but we can do without harsh insinuations. What we need is a solution to our problems. Putting each other on the defensive is not the solution."

Summers closed his eyes and allowed the purple glow to subside as he took a deep breath. "My apologies, Ambassador."

Udina nodded. "Councilors, in his own way, the general has highlighted some of the issues at hand. One that has not been fully discussed is your ability to handle Reaper technology. My government is gravely concerned with your handling of the Culexus escapees. That concern affects your proposal from last time: that we should turn over the Leviathan of Dis to your people.

"Our concern is that you have thus far worked with relatively miniscule amounts of Reaper technology, and have not been able to curtail the side effect known as 'Indoctrination' that results in exposure to it. Gifting you a full-sized Reaper, functional or not, would seem to be a dangerous course of action."

"So you would keep it to yourselves?" Tevos asked.

"Or destroy it if necessary," the ambassador confirmed.

"To the uninitiated observer, it would seem that you are hoarding technology for yourselves," Sparatus commented.

"Or safeguarding it from fools," the general growled.

"We have made some progress towards isolating the culprit of Indoctrination," Valern objected. "If not an entire Reaper, surely you could share small amounts of their technology, or some of your research observations to that end. Otherwise, how would we learn how to handle it ourselves?"

"Perhaps a joint team?" Udina offered. "Obviously, individual studies would be conducted on both sides, but a third effort that shares information could be a decent compromise. The potential dangers would be greatly mitigated, and we would both benefit somewhat from our endeavors."

"We would be amenable to such a possibility," Valern agreed. "There are, of course, many details to be worked out later."

Everyone turned their attention to the general, waiting his appraisal. He was silent in contemplation for nearly a minute. "I want to see more activity on your end in hunting down and eliminating the escaped test subjects. They're causing plenty of trouble to both of us, and there's no telling what their goal is."

"We shall double our efforts," Tevos volunteered quickly.

"I hope so, Councilor, for your sake," Summers warned. "My superiors are not as forgiving as I am."

"Well that was ominous," Garrus commented as the general turned and stalked toward his official car.

"You're telling me," Shepard agreed.

"Vakarian, apologies. Must take leave," Mordin said from behind them.

"What? Why?" Garrus demanded.

"Official business, cannot wait. Must handle personally. Will rejoin you later."

"Hold on doc, 'official business?' You're retired."

Mordin snorted. "Never truly retire. Always involved. Should know that."

Garrus eyed the salarian critically. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

"Will explain later. For now, must take leave. Time critical matter. Will pass along additional information if found."

"Fine," Garrus pursed his mandibles. "But I'm going to hold you to that promise, doc."

 **The Olympus, Secure Communications**

 _"You realize that this was supposed to be my vacation, Steven?"_ Hannah Shepard commented.

"Sorry, but you were already there, and you have clearance for this," Hackett explained. "Now what did you find out?"

The junior admiral shrugged. _"Not much. Jessica kept telling me that she thinks her husband knew what happened to her son, and who took him. He always denied it though, and apparently never tried to find him. That's why they got divorced. She got real upset when I brought it back up, so I'd say she's still angry with him."_

"At least we were able to give her some closure, knowing that we found her son," Hackett muttered. "Did she know anything else?"

 _"Everything she told me is pretty much the same as the initial police statement from all those years ago. If she knows anything besides that, well,"_ the junior admiral shrugged helplessly, _"I'm not a trained interrogator. I can't really add anything else to it."_

"I suppose that's to be expected," Hackett sighed.

 _"Oh thank you for that lack of confidence,"_ Admiral Shepard noted sarcastically.

"Not what I meant, Hannah, and you know it."

 _"You're too easy to tease,"_ the woman smiled. _"Now if you'll excuse me, I think I had enough of investigating a missing son, and I'd like to go back to spending time with mine."_

"Tell him I said congratulations on being the top of his class," the fleet admiral chuckled.

The hologram winked out, and Hackett turned toward the exit only to stop when he heard the beeping of another incoming call. "Yes?"

 _"Sir,"_ an image of a man in civilian clothes appeared. _"We managed to track him down."_

"Bring him in."

The man hesitated. _"We won't be getting information out of him sir. He's dead."_

"Dead?! How?"

 _"Sir, according to the examiners, Lieutenant Commander Ronald Taylor died drunk falling down the stairs of his apartment. Broken neck. He was dead six hours before we found him."_

Hackett clenched his jaw. "Confiscate all his personal property, and run a deep background investigation on him. No rules, no restrictions. I want to know everything he did before and after Jacob Taylor went missing."

 _Codex: Triage Contingency_

 _In the later stages of the Ethereal War, Psionics quickly became recognized as priceless and indispensable assets to X-COM's war effort. To that end, Central Officer Bradford proposed the Triage Contingency._

 _Top priority was placed on the survival of psionic individuals, with non-gifted operatives being literally ordered to sacrifice themselves for said individuals. This contributed to the high casualty rates suffered by X-COM teams, with some operatives nursing resentment at the orders. In some cases, disaster occurred with teams self-destructing in the midst of a mission._

 _Historians consider the order to be heavy handed and brutal, but ultimately necessary. Psionics proved to be a key factor in strengthening X-COM forces and turning back the invasion._

 _The Triage Contingency is still in effect to this day, though with modifications. In the event that a psionic individual cannot be saved, Alliance soldiers are ordered to destroy the body at all cost to prevent capture and study by the enemy._

 _Codex: Psionic Conditioning and Containment device_

 _With the discovery of Psionics, one challenge the fledgling Alliance faced was the inevitable existence of Psionic criminals. Dr. Moira Vahlen's research led to this invention._

 _The device completely encloses the head, and is powered by unconscious psionic emissions from the individual. A sheath similar to a Faraday cage prevents any psionic energy from escaping beyond the device, thus preventing the individual from affecting anyone. As a result of its design, it has garnered the unofficial designation of "headcase."_

 _Should the psionic attempt to exert their power, the device would capture the energy and convert it into a powerful electrical discharge applied to the peripheral nervous system. This has the effect of disrupting concentration as well as causing pain from muscle seizure._

 _For more powerful individuals, this level of containment, level one, is insufficient. Level two containment involves a permanent meld-constructed implant that provides a direct connection from the device directly into the center of the brain. The implant increases the sensitivity of the device and applies the electrical discharge directly to the brain itself. This implant can never be safely removed, as the meld nano-constructors irreversibly mesh the device into the folds of the brain tissue._

 _While level one containment can continue indefinitely with little ill effect, level two will eventually result in the complete destruction of any psionic capability, as well as substantial brain damage. This is characterized by loss of total muscle control (ie, spasms and twitches), memory loss, speech disabilities, vision impairment and many other symptoms._

 _For obvious reasons, the threat of level two containment is one of the most severe threats Alliance law enforcement can level on any psionics. While it would be considered overkill for those with low potential, it would still have the same damaging effects, which control officers often describe in loving detail to recalcitrant criminals._

 **Out of all the reviews I've gotten, only ONE person ever guessed rightly who Jester really was.**

 **General Summers is a man who will never willingly retire, and the contingency is the main reason why. He has had to watch many of his comrades sacrifice themselves for him. It has deeply impacted his psyche, the fact that so many literally died for his sake. He feels that if he retires, he would be spitting on their sacrifice.  
**

 **And so he continues to serve in whatever capacity he can. And he'll keep it up until someone kills him.**

 **Shepard has a similar mindset. She is designed and modified to be one of the strongest soldiers in existence. Granted, her psionic power is relatively immature compared to the likes of the general, but she makes up for it with an augmented body and heightened senses and reflexes.**

 **So having someone else save her really rubs her wrong. She is supposed to be the one saving others. She doesn't take failure of that job very well. When her brother was kidnapped, she took it very personally as a failure on her part. She has almost a psychological need to be the one to shoulder the majority of danger, in order to spare others. When people die on her watch, it is devastating.**

 **And right there is the answer to the question I posed two chapters ago: what is Captain Shepard's greatest fear?**

 **The answer is very relevant to the story. Shepard has plot armor. The story HAS to have her survive. So in order to make her part compelling, I have to hurt her in non-physical ways. More than that, I have to BREAK her. Emotional pain is always much worse than any sort of physical pain**

 **So here's a new question: what do you think I will do to break her?**


	39. Conspiracies and Theories

**Another long wait. Once again, I'm sorry. This took a while to piece together, and not helped at all by taking two weeks of vacation. I got lazy. But here it is.**

 **EDIT: Redemption's Avenger, you are the first reviewer to make that connection re: your review on Ch 26.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Thirty-seven

 **C-Sec Headquarters**

"Boss," Tallus looked up from his desk, already annoyed with the extra paperwork he had to file because some idiot in the building fucked up the chain of evidence in a case.

"What?"

"Your son said he wanted to see you."

Tallus closed his eyes for a moment. "Did he say whether it's business or personal?"

"Proabably a bit of both," the lieutenant shrugged. "He didn't say."

The elder turian grumbled as he stood up to follow.

"So help me Garrus if you're about to make my day even worse than it is…" he trailed off.

"Nice to see you too, dad," Garrus replied, deadpan.

"Let me guess," Tallus began as he eyed the quarian standing behind his son, "this is the girl you've kept your eye on, isn't it?"

Tali blushed behind her face mask. Garrus had been eyeballing _her_?!

"Dad, come on," Garrus groaned.

"Oh this is precious," Tallus grinned, the headaches of the day completely forgotten. "So you're the girl that stole his heart, eh?"

"Don't act like you haven't met her before, dad," Garrus muttered, dragging a taloned hand down his face.

"W-well, I w-wouldn't know about th-that," Tali stammered, suddenly finding her hands very interesting.

"Sweet, shy, demure, she's perfect for you!"

"Do you have to do this?!" Garrus demanded.

"Well you've given your mother and I plenty of grief over the years." Tallus smirked. "Consider this a nice little bit of payback."

"What the hell did I do to you?"

"You want the long or the short version?"

"You were his son," Executor Pallin called from his office. "Enough said."

"Why is everyone ganging up on me?" Garrus moaned.

"You've always given C-Sec plenty of crap, so now it's our turn, and you're standing in our building."

"I've helped you guys close out cases!"

"And left us with more than enough messes to clean up."

Garrus sighed. "Well on that note, here's another one. But I didn't make this one."

Tallus turned serious. "What do we have to look out for now?"

"Can we do this someplace more private?"

Pallin stepped to the side and gestured toward his office door. He stuck his arm across the doorway to stop Tali.

"Let her in," Garrus said. "She's part of this too."

Tallus raised a critical eye. "A civilian, Garrus?"

"Close the door and I'll explain."

Pallin closed the door and then leaned against it. "Alright, so what do you have to add to the hundred or so things my people have to look out for this time?"

"Project Culexus. You might have heard of it?" A series of head shakes greeted him. "The Council decided in their infinite wisdom that they needed a countermeasure for Alliance psionics, and that we were going to use Reaper technology to augment our soldiers."

Pallin cocked his head to the side. "Sounds reasonable. I heard that the Reaper gave Ambassador Udina quite the migraine."

"Except for the fact that it drives people insane," Garrus added dryly. "There's a little thing our scientists have found out about called Indoctrination. Somehow, Reaper tech brainwashes people who are exposed to it into becoming servants. They haven't been able to figure out a cause."

"Does this have something to do with you and Sparatus being recalled back to Palaven five years ago?" Tallus remembered.

"We met with the conclave of Primarchs. They wanted my recommendation and expertise. I told them it was a horrible idea. They went and did it anyway."

"So what happened?" Tallus asked.

"Long story short, the test subjects escaped. They were a bunch of condemned criminals. We tracked down two of the worst ones: Garm of the Blood Pack, and Jona Sideris of Eclipse."

"You mean to tell me," Pallin growled furiously, "that some idiot decided to augment some of the worst criminals in the galaxy into supersoldiers with prototype tech that drives them insane?"

"Like I said, I told them it was a horrible idea."

"How in the spirits did they escape?"

Garrus shrugged. "We don't know. The STG is trying to figure that one out."

"I'm not seeing how your new girlfriend fits into this," Tallus commented.

"Dad…" Garrus muttered as Tali twiddled her fingers, "she's been with us while we were trying to hunt them down. And her dad is an Admiral in the Migrant fleet."

"Still don't see it. This isn't a quarian affair."

"She got into trouble and her bodyguards asked us to help rescue her from the geth. And she stuck around while we went after the test subjects. That's why she's here."

"So you're keeping a civilian around this project because she just defaulted into it?" Pallin inquired. "I'd love to see the rule of classification that falls under, especially since she has high level connections to a foreign power."

"I'm not stupid."

"Never said you were," Tallus grinned.

Garrus rolled his eyes. "I'm keeping her with me because she'll be safe and any information she has will be safe. Plus, it turned out she didn't really need rescuing from the geth. They let her go peacefully."

Both older men blinked. "The geth took you hostage and then just let you walk away?"

Tali swallowed nervously. "I-it's complicated," she stammered. "The geth have been wanting to understand what happened before the Morning War."

Tallus tapped his mandible in thought. "Everyone knows the story about the geth rebelling against the quarians. But you're acting like you found out something you really wish you didn't know. Something that implies the story isn't the truth. Or at least," he drifted a critical eye over the girl, "not the whole truth."

"Dad…" Garrus warned.

"Since the Reaper attack, nobody's seen the geth in the galaxy except for you," the elder turian continued. "Before, there were reports of small skirmishes here and there, but nothing after. You were joyriding around with an Alliance ship, and the first time the geth ever met the Alliance was around the time of the Reaper attack. Garrus said the geth called that Reaper 'Nazara.' They acted like the Reapers were machine gods. And then the Alliance destroyed it. Maybe it scared the geth. If they followed the Reapers before, maybe they thought that no one could possibly beat them. And then the humans did."

"You think maybe the geth are scared of the Alliance?" Pallin asked.

Tallus shrugged. "If I were running a race of rebellious robots, I'd focus on survival first and foremost. You'd never know when your makers are going to get allies to bring you to heel. No way the geth would have partnered with any of the other Council races. We might have left the quarians to rot, but we wouldn't have helped the geth. The Reapers and the Alliance are possible allies. The Alliance has basically thrown down with the Reapers, and the geth saw it happen. I would ally with the strongest group just to save my ass."

"The geth just want to understand what happened!" Tali protested. "If I could get my people to see the truth, maybe we could stop fighting!"

"Let me guess: what you saw is that the quarians struck first against the geth over something miniscule and meaningless? And it just escalated from there? We see that kind of thing every day," Pallin explained. "Some family argument starts and ends with someone dead or injured. Or some scumbag did something to another scumbag back in their school days and it comes around to someone getting beat up or killed today. Old grudges die hard. People don't forget. Assuming my guess is accurate, even if your people know, who's to say they'll listen to you? Or that they'll let things go?"

"So we just keep fighting until one of us dies off?" Tali demanded.

"Sometimes that just how it works out," Pallin replied tiredly.

 **Bekenstein**

"This place makes me feel dirtier the longer I'm here," Kasumi whispered in disgust as she saw a drunk turian with both hands on a chained, very petite and naked asari.

"It is also one of the safe environments to conduct surveillance of Mr. Hock's estate," Thane replied.

"How can you just ignore… _that?!_ " the thief gestured furiously at the scene as a human walked up and accepted a datapad full of credits from the drunk.

"What makes you think I ignore it?" the drell said coolly, not taking his eyes off the building.

"Well I don't know, how about the fact that you haven't once looked over there?"

"Drell have photographic memories," the assassin explained. "There are some things I would rather not remember the rest of my life. In any case, I can also hear her."

Kasumi shut up as the trio moved off, the asari girl trailing with hopeless resignation.

"If it's any consolation," Thane added, "helping to take down Mr. Hock might improve the lives of people like her, or at least ensure that fewer people suffer her fate."

The woman gritted her teeth, but accepted the point and refocused. "So many cameras all over the place," she noted, "but not many guards."

"The complement is smaller than I would expect," Thane agreed.

"What about undercover guards outside the estate?"

"Unlikely," the assassin dismissed. "If anything, his organization might have a policy of paying people who live in the area to report if they see anything interesting."

"Like people who don't belong."

"Yes. Outside security is only a little less than what other people might have. Excessive security stands out and creates a target. I would expect far more intensive security measures on the inside."

"Such as thermal and magnetic sensor strips along the walls?"

Thane snorted. "I have seen ceiling mounted bioscanners, carefully calibrated air circulation systems in empty rooms that someone reconfigured to act as intrusion alarms, radiation detectors at either end of a long hallway covered with emitters that deactivate only for authorized personnel, and more besides."

"You're talking about the kind of security for a head of state," Kasumi breathed.

Thane raised an eyebrow. "And this man is the head of an interstellar criminal empire that a major galactic power is trying to investigate. He would not take chances with his own security."

"So how are we going to scope out inside the place?" the thief demanded, wondering how far in over her head she was.

"Slowly and carefully," the drell answered patiently. "There should be areas of relatively low security that we can hole up in and observe. We just need to find a few and then use them. Also, we should let Matriarch Aethyta know the outside plans of the estate so her commandos can evacuate us in an emergency."

"Right, I'll draw everything up tonight."

 **Citadel, Alliance Embassy**

Nagase wiped away a few more tears as the doors closed on the casket. Next to her, General Summers stood by.

"I read the report," Summers noted quietly. "You have no reason to blame yourself, colonel."

She looked over questioningly.

"I've been there," the old man reminded them, still looking at the rear of the truck as it started up, "more times than I care to remember. Every time, you always think the same thing: that you could have done something to prevent it."

"I could have tried to rein him in," the woman argued. "He was being reckless."

"Maybe," Summers turned away, gesturing for her to follow, "but that's not what happened."

"If I'd been in the cockpit with him-"

"Then you'd both be dead," the general cut her off. "Or maybe you would have lived. No one can see the future. And I've found that asking yourself that question over and over just makes things worse."

The colonel was silent for a moment. "Then what should I do?"

"I suppose this is where I'm supposed to give you some bullshit about coming to terms with it," he sighed. "It'll never happen. You'll always beat yourself up over it. Unless you forget about it."

Nagase recoiled at the thought. "But that's-"

"Disrespecting his memory? That's what I thought for the longest time." They stopped at the elevator, and the general turned to face her. "But then I realized that the real disrespect is to forget their sacrifice. You do that by giving up. You quit fighting. And I never quit fighting."

"But you just said…"

"I got drunk, a lot. I tried to forget the bodies. The smells, the sounds, the feel of blood all over your uniform. I wanted that to go away. But I never let myself forget why they died like that." He pressed the call button without looking. "You forget how they died. You never forget how they lived."

"Does that help?" the colonel asked as the doors opened.

Summers stepped inside and allowed his weariness to show. "Somedays…it doesn't."

* * *

"So we're just waiting on a replacement for the backup bird?" Shepard asked.

"And a new pilot for it," Anderson confirmed. "I know the guy. Doesn't take many risks, and he's just as good, if not better, than that hotshot you have driving the Normandy."

"I bet Joker would like to contest that," Pressly remarked.

"Well this guy flew a crippled civilian airliner on Earth and its engines died mid-flight. Air traffic control fucked up and they had a mishap where a takeoff smacked him during landing. He lost half a wing, and it sent him into a death spiral. He managed to straighten that bird out and land with no engines and only backup battery power for the flaps and brakes. No casualties. Can't say the other airplane was as lucky. And that was before I met him."

"I heard about him," Ambassador Udina commented. "Solo-Wing Commander Larry Foulke, right?"

"Well, one-and-a-half wing Larry Foulke doesn't sound quite as catchy," the older captain grinned. "The brass liked the opening act, so they snatched him up and trained him for Spec-Ops. He's IFE countermeasures instructor over at Eridanus. Well, he was before this."

"And he was the guy who handled your exfil flights, right?" Shepard queried.

"Call sign was Pixy. He had an old fashioned snuff box from his great-granddad, and he liked to touch the ashes in it every time before he went out. We joked that it was some magic pixie dust." Anderson shook his head with a smirk. "He wasn't too fond of that nickname at first. Then we started saying it was because he was like magic when his hands were on the joystick."

"You know, you never told me much about your time as a Predator."

"Still classified, Shepard. And no, you still don't have clearance for that."

Shepard smirked.

"And no you can't pull that one on me because I am read in on your mission."

The smirk vanished. "You're no fun," the red-head pouted.

"Well that's the job of the superior officer," Anderson slapped Shepard on the arm.

"I see you're enjoying yourselves," Summers noted dryly as he stepped out of the elevator.

"You should talk," Udina fired back. "I know you were definitely enjoying your little routine as the big bad general in front of the Council."

"I won't deny that it was somewhat cathartic. But on a more legitimate note, I am definitely not happy with how their mess has spilled over onto us."

"Maybe it's intentional, sir," Pressly said.

Everyone turned to face him. "Care to explain that," Shepard asked.

"Well think about it," the commander went on. "Indoctrination is a form of mind control on the part of the Reapers. The Reapers are out for everybody. But if they can make it so that not everybody is out for them, that makes it easier for them to take everyone apart. Divide and conquer."

"Turn us all against one another," Udina continued the thought.

"Garm and some test subjects were involved in the attacks on independent colonies. That brings the Alliance and the Council into conflict right there," Pressly pointed out. "The next one involved the Terminus System pirates and mercenaries on Omega. Everyone knows there's no love lost between them and us, and the Citadel races have gone out of their way not to get into an armed conflict with them. But with these attacks, they're now drawn into this."

"So what's next?" Anderson wondered. "The Quarians? The Krogan?"

"The Batarians," Shepard cut in. "Taniks the Scarred, one of the big names Garrus mentioned. He was a Hegemony assassin."

"Even in spite of current events, we know that the Hegemony Remnant is still quite influential," Summers mused. "And they are working on restoring a dead Reaper to life, ostensibly to use against us somehow."

"From what I hear from the Foreign Diplomatic Service, a lot of batarians are ambivalent on where their support lies," Udina recalled.

"How do you think they'll feel about a former Hegemony soldier killing someone important to them?" Pressly ventured?"

"More like a Hegemony traitor," Shepard corrected. "Garrus said that his own superiors tried to kill him."

"Loyalty is a funny thing," Summers countered. "You can never tell who or what it lies with."

"Kind of like a hooker," Anderson smiled, only to instantly wipe it off his face as Shepard whirled around on him. "Wasn't insinuating anything, Erin…"

"I'm debating how hard to throw you through that window, sir," Shepard smiled dangerously.

"The frames are rated at close to 200 megapascals," Udina volunteered, "or so I've been told."

"Not helping!" Anderson hissed.

The far door to the office opened as an embassy aide waved a man in civilian dress into the room. "Yo buddy, you still alive?"

"Uh, for now," the captain replied, turning to greet the newcomer. "Shepard, this is Commander Larry Foulke, aka Solo-Wing Pixy."

"Pleasure to meet you, Commander," Shepard greeted.

"Pleasure's all mine ma'am," Pixy answered, meeting Shepard's handshake with a surprisingly strong grip. "And for your information, Blackhorse, it's Captain now. They bumped me up a rank when they pulled me back out of retirement."

"Blackhorse, huh?" the red-head turned to Anderson. "Never heard that call sign before."

"Well you ever hear how he got divor-umph!" Anderson clapped a hand over his mouth.

"There's nothing to tell," he said with an awkward smile before glaring at Pixy.

"Oh I have to hear this one," Summers said as he grabbed a seat.

 **The Olympus, Secure Communications**

"Director Moore," Hackett greeted. "How are things in Intelligence?"

 _"There's enough on my plate to worry about without taking your little subterfuges into account, Steven,"_ the director replied. _"Care to explain why the OSI cares about the death of a retired Lieutenant Commander?"_

"It's a long story sir," the admiral warned.

 _"And I'm sitting at my desk, all alone, with secure communication protocols active,"_ the civilian noted. _"I don't intend to leave my office until I hear exactly what is so important about Ronald Taylor that the fleet admiral of the Navy is taking a personal interest."_

"We found his son."

 _"Wonderful,"_ Moore commented dryly. _"I'm still waiting for the part where it warrants your attention."_

"We found him in the Terminus Systems," Hackett continued. "He was taking over the criminal groups on Omega."

 _"Well that's a long way from home for the son of a naval officer,"_ the director folded his hands together. _"And those are some odd life goals."_

"Shepard and the Spectre fought and killed him. He had psionics."

The director lurched forward at his desk. _"Excuse me?!"_ he demanded.

"Jacob Taylor managed to hold his own against Captain Erin Shepard in combat," Hackett clarified. "According to her after-action report, he had exceptionally strong psionic power, enough to overwhelm her momentarily. He was also physically and genetically enhanced to a disturbing degree."

Moore was silent for a moment. _"A leak?"_ He was one of very few individuals outside the military briefed on Project Jaeger.

"We think it's possible, if not probable, sir."

 _"'We,' admiral?"_ the director repeated.

"General Summers, Doctor Vahlen, and myself," Hackett explained. "Prior to this, I had some indications and suspicions regarding infiltration, and I went to them. Considering their history, it's very unlikely either of them would be responsible."

Moore thought to himself. _"Genetic modification and psionic power…the only rogue organization I can think of that would have the means and know-how to create their own Jaegers would be EXALT. We never managed to confirm their destruction as a group."_

"My thoughts exactly," Hackett agreed.

 _"So you think Commander Taylor might have been involved with EXALT?"_

"His own wife told us that she suspected he knew what happened to his son, but he never went looking for him. That strongly suggests a connection, sir."

 _"And your reason for drawing on OSI instead of coming to me first?"_

"I wanted to avoid word getting out about the investigation."

 _"And clearly that didn't work out, considering I heard about it,"_ the director stated baldly. _"Let me guess: you think it's possible that someone very high up is leaking information. At the very least, they know about the Jaeger Project, and they have the authority to mess with government medical records and psionic evaluations. Not that many people with that kind of horsepower."_

"Yes sir. Unfortunately, any sort of investigation-"

 _"-would alert them?"_ Moore smiled wryly. _"I hate to point out the obvious, but if they killed Commander Taylor as you suspect, they're probably on alert already, Steven."_

"I hadn't thought about that," Hackett admitted with chagrin.

 _"On a side note, if you suspected me, you'd be a lot less forthcoming with this information,"_ Moore mused. _"I take it that you trust me not to be the source of the leak?"_

"General Summers does," the admiral confirmed.

 _"Marcus is a little too trusting for his own good,"_ the director sighed. _"I hope you'll share any other findings with me."_

"I will, sir," Hackett promised. "There is one last thing."

 _"I'm all ears."_

"Shepard said in her report that Jacob's psionic power felt corrupted. It fluctuated. Not only that, it was green."

 _"Psionic energy is purple,"_ the director objected.

"Yes sir. But Jacob's aura was green. Plus, there were indications of mental instability. And he had some odd last words. He implied that he was just a puppet under control, but killing him freed him from that control."

 _"Brainwashing?"_ Moore suggested.

"Possibly, sir. Most likely an incomplete form."

 _"Jacob disappeared over a decade ago,"_ the director thought aloud. _"That's plenty of time to train him, and augment him. And to implement a brainwashing campaign."_

"But if they did, the brainwashing was incomplete at the time. Who's to say that they haven't perfected it by now?"

 **Earth, Intelligence Headquarters**

"I need to see the director," the man explained.

"He's in the middle of a secure call right now," the secretary replied. "No idea when he's coming out."

"How about now?" Moore asked as he opened the door. "Jack, come in."

"Well, I guess the director will see you now, Mr. Ryan," the woman noted.

"You were in there for a while sir," Ryan commented as the door closed behind him.

"Classified business to take care of," the director evaded.

"Can you read me in?"

"This goes a bit higher than your level, Jack."

Ryan raised an eyebrow. "What's so important that a deputy director doesn't have clearance?"

"I might be able to let you in eventually, but not now."

"Alright sir," _It's not like Hock didn't warn us about this anyway,_ the deputy director thought to himself.

 _Codex: Alliance Mobile Industry_

 _Scattered throughout Alliance territory are enormous mobile space stations housing skilled workers, their families and millions of tons of complex machinery. These stations function as spaceborne refineries and factories._

 _These stations exist to eliminate the vulnerability of static planetary facilities. Rather than transport raw material to a certain planet for processing, corporations can bring the facility to the raw material. Once a resource area or planet is exhausted, the entire station can be moved to another location, eliminating the cost of new facilities on each planet, and limiting construction on the planet to cargo spaceports in order to accommodate "ferry flights" of raw materials up to the station._

 _These platforms are essentially small cities. They can be partially disassembled without the need to evacuate the structures in order to allow easy relocation through a temporary Wormhole Gate assembly, thus minimizing downtime of operation._

 **Lots of speculation in this chapter, and a new shout-out.**

* * *

 **The modern theory of war is that your objective is to destroy the enemy's fighting capability.**

 **To that end, the most important component is logistics. The enemy's supply chain is number one on the target priority list. Refueling stations, armories, hangars, vehicle depots, infantry staging areas, weapons storage bunkers, these are the most important targets to hit first. The faster you can deplete the enemy's resources, the smaller the window they have to strike against you.**

 **But when those targets aren't available, what's next? Industry. First priority is existing resources. Second is the means of replenishing resources. So if you can't hit current supplies, you wipe out future sources. Target factories, refineries, farms and other vital facilities in a production chain like power stations and transportation lines. As a bonus, in doing so, you'd also cut down on the skilled workforce, which is arguably more important. A factory is just a building if there's nobody to work it.**

 **Now with these mobile factories and refineries, the Alliance makes it that much harder to go to war with them. You can't rely on blockading a planet to prevent their resupply. They'll just move the facility someplace else. Sure, they'll have to construct something at the next planet, but the bulk of their infrastructure is already in place. Instead of taking two years to rebuild and retool, it only takes maybe two weeks to begin operations, and a couple months to bring it back up to full scale.**

 **As a side benefit, it also removes the most harmful aspects of heavy industry from the planetary environment. Haz Waste can be collected from other stations and sent to a processing station or ejected toward a sun for disposal. Very minimal environmental pollution.**

 **Of course, the downside is that it's a much more exposed target if located. But the Alliance never leaves these places alone. Each station has escape ships permanently docked and pre-programmed with escape coordinates, and detachments of the various fleets periodically swing by each station to make sure things are going well.**


	40. Family matters

**Still on the Citadel for the most part. Should only be one more chapter before they move to the next mission.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Thirty-eight

 **The Citadel, Unknown location**

Miranda stepped away from the catatonic form and huffed to herself in frustration. The Shadow Broker was proving to be very elusive by her standards. Dr. T'Soni's leads had thus far only been individuals with fleeting contact with one of the Broker's agents. Paranoia was a foil to even her brand of interrogation.

"Still nothing," she said into her comm.

Liara sighed on the other end. _"I'll see if I can find someone else,"_ the young asari replied.

"Doctor, I know that you've been holding out on me," Miranda noted sharply. "You know of someone who has had repeated contact, but you haven't told me who."

 _"I do,"_ Liara admitted after a moment. _"But interrogating this person would cause a huge diplomatic incident."_

"I can be discreet," Miranda commented, deadpan. "Who?"

There was a long silence. _"Spectre Tela Vasir,"_ the doctor told her reluctantly.

"A Spectre, hmm?" Miranda repeated with a sly grin. "And what would a Council Spectre be doing gallivanting with a third-party spymaster?"

 _"She uses information from him to go after Council targets. In return, I assume that the Shadow Broker gets protection from her."_

"Well," Miranda's grin turned deadly as she began walking away from the brain-dead man, "that protection is about to run out."

 **The Citadel, Alliance Embassy**

Samara stood to the side nervously as the secure communications room technicians worked to establish a link. Even someone as old and powerful as herself felt somewhat intimidated by the one-eyed general standing behind her.

The head technician nodded to Shepard as the screen flickered to life. It revealed a small room with an asari eagerly sitting at a desk.

 _"Banshee reporting,"_ Morinth announced.

"Hello Morinth," Shepard greeted.

 _"Erin!"_ the asari exclaimed. _"I knew you couldn't stay away from me forever!"_

"Not for lack of trying," Shepard snarked.

 _"But we could do so much together!"_

"You're not fooling anyone, Morinth," Shepard drawled. "We both know what you really want with me, and while I'm flattered, there are rules and regulations."

Samara blinked, still unused to the fact that Morinth could now meld without killing people.

 _"I keep telling you people to call me 'Jack,' now. Can't you do that just once?"_ the younger asari pouted.

"No," Shepard answered flatly. "Not when I have a lifetime of your memories where you're going by your birth name."

Samara blinked again in surprise. Sharing memories like that was a deeply intimate act for asari bond-mates. The fact that her daughter felt comfortable enough to do so with this Alliance supersoldier suggested a much deeper relationship than she would have ever expected.

"As amusing as this conversation is," General Summers rumbled, stepping into the view of the camera, "this is not a social call, agent Banshee."

Shepard nodded. "We ran into your mother."

Instantly, Morinth's good cheer evaporated, to be replaced with a cold expression of pure hatred. For the justicar, the change was startling. _"That bitch is not my mother!"_ she snarled.

"Far be it from me to intervene in family affairs," the general continued, "but circumstances make it necessary. Your mother threatened us in order to try and force us to hand you over, and Shepard was forced to reveal our deal with you. A deal that I was not made aware of," he trailed off, pinning Shepard with a slight glare.

"Director Harper kept it under wraps for security reasons," Shepard explained lamely.

The general raised an eyebrow, but let it drop. "After being informed of the extent of your involvement with us, your mother requested an opportunity to contact you."

 _"I have nothing to say to that woman,"_ Morinth hissed.

"I told her that," Shepard nodded, "but she still insists on talking to you."

There was a long icy pause. _"Fine,"_ she bit out.

The general turned to face the justicar and jerked his head at the screen. Nervously, Samara stepped forward as the general moved back to the side. "Morinth," she struggled to find the proper words, "I…"

 _"It works better when you move your lips,"_ her daughter snapped. _"But I guess you wouldn't know that, since you've never wanted to talk before."_

Samara swallowed. "I know that I have made mistakes in the past-"

 _"Now there's an understatement,"_ Morinth retorted.

"-please let me apologize," the justicar begged.

 _"What? You think an apology will erase everything you've done?"_ the younger woman demanded. _"It's going to take a lot more than words for me to forget how you've been trying to kill me for the past four centuries!"_

"It was the law!" Samara protested. "I had no choice-"

 _"YOU ALWAYS HAD A CHOICE!"_ Morinth shrieked in rage, her eyes beginning to glow purple through the feed. _"You chose to become a Justicar! It's Rila and Falere who had no choice! You would have killed them if they didn't go quietly! Just like you've been trying to kill me!"_

"I was trying to save them," Samara replied. "The temple is a safe place for them."

 _"Like how a prison is a safe place for criminals,"_ Morinth fired back. _"The only thing you care about saving is yourself. If you really gave a damn about us, you wouldn't have tried to lock us all up just because we're born 'disordered!'"_

"I made a mistake!"

 _"Yeah,"_ she snorted. _"That's all we are to you. Me, Rila, Falere, we're your_ mistakes _from when you were fooling around as a maiden! If you really gave a damn about us, you would have tried to find some way for us to be a family together! But what did you do? As soon as you found out about our condition, you went to the Justicars so you could 'atone for your mistakes!' We're not your daughters. We're your 'mistakes,' and you tried to lock us up so everyone on Thessia wouldn't find out that all three of us are 'disordered!'"_

"Others would have just killed you!"

 _"You could have helped us hide! You could have kept us all together! But no! You picked honor and duty over family! Where it mattered the most, you said 'fuck family!' We don't mean anything to you! You call yourself my mother? A real mother would accept and love her children for what they are! But not you! You never loved anyone but yourself!"_

Samara was flabbergasted, her mouth flopping uselessly. She'd never thought of things that way, and the worst part was that much of it was very true. Back when she'd discovered that all three of her daughters were Ardat-Yakshi, the shame had overwhelmed her. Being known as the mother of an Ardat-Yakshi carried a massive stigma. But producing _only_ Ardat-Yakshi from her fleeting relationships was far worse. If the Justicars had found out on their own, they would have isolated her as well. But because she volunteered to join their order and help contain her children, they allowed her the freedom to move about the galaxy. And she would be lying if she denied that reason for joining them.

 _"I'm the one who found a way to free them,"_ Morinth continued. _"The Alliance asked me to work with them. I asked them to look for a cure. And they found it. I did what you should have done! And you tried to ruin everything by threatening the Alliance to get to me!"_

"I didn't know…"

 _"You never would have tried!"_

Samara swallowed again, mustering herself. "I was wrong," she began firmly. "I realize that now. I should have been a better mother. I should have cared for you three more than I did. Please let me make amends. Now that I know the truth about Ardat-Yakshi, I want to bring them both to the Alliance so they can be free. I was never happy with leaving them at the temple and denying them a chance to see the galaxy outside."

Morinth held up her hands. _"Shut up! Just shut up! Don't even bother doing anything! You'll ruin any chance of getting them out! Knowing you, you'd tell the rest of the Justicars all about the cure, and then they'll never be free. Not only that, but with how you gave birth to three of us, the Matriarchs would probably take you with them, and force you to pump out more Ardat-Yakshi to train as soldiers! Ever think of that?"_

Samara froze, horror-struck. What Morinth described was essentially sex-slavery, a crime that she had always considered one of the worst things anyone could do to another sapient being. She had liberated many asari from such fates, but never considered that it could happen to her, let alone by her own people.

And what she said was definitely within the realm of possibility. She'd observed galactic civilization growing more and more ruthless and desperate in response to the Alliance's presence as governments struggled to try and strengthen themselves. The salarians were granting parole to many criminals in exchange for being enlisted as spies and soldiers in the reserves. The turians were aggressively recruiting disenfranchised batarians within the Free Batarian Federation, many of whom had engaged in piracy or terrorism. Her own people had been desperately reaching out to the Quarians and the Krogan, hoping to secure allies against the likelihood of war with the Alliance, only to be rebuffed cautiously by the former and completely ignored by the latter. Having glimpsed the power of the humans and their allies, the Citadel races were doing everything possible to meet that standard, including essentially threatening the lesser races with draconian punishment should they abandon the Council races.

 _"Just go do what you do best and live for yourself. Forget about us. Forget about that cure. It's time for me to do what you never tried to do, and I'll do it right. I'll free my sisters, and I don't want or need your help to do it. And if you come after me again,"_ Morinth's eyes glowed ominously, **_"this time, I will fucking kill you."_**

The link cut out, and Shepard turned to face the frozen justicar. "I told you she didn't want to talk."

The door to the room unlocked, and Ambassador Udina poked his head in. "Shepard, someone downstairs wishes to see you."

 **Bekenstein, Hock Mansion**

Something about the interior set her on edge. Kasumi had the hair-prickling sensation that they were being watched.

It didn't make sense. They had spotted and avoided every camera and sensor on their way in. Between the two, they had the combined infiltration skills of an experienced thief and one of the best assassins in the galaxy. Yet she couldn't shake the feeling that someone knew they were there. Others might have dismissed it as jitters. But both the human and the drell had learned to trust their instincts.

Still, there was no reaction. The security routines and patterns of the guards and personnel in and around the mansion had not changed a whit. In the absence of anything to justify their instincts, the two had chosen to proceed with extreme caution.

Neither of them were foolish enough to think anything worth stealing or hacking would be on the upper levels. Basic security principles were against that. Isolation equals security, and one sure method of isolation used anywhere was burial. Kasumi was certain that the best place to look for information on Hock's dealings would be on a sublevel, at a computer archive. In addition to physical security, burial would also protect against unwanted EMP or scanners.

As far as Thane was concerned, locating the ideal point for his partner to hack the system was one thing. Doing it safely was an entirely different beast. All of his jobs working for the Hanar had been in areas where escape was a simple matter of leaving the premises and blending into the crowd. That would most certainly not be an option here. Matriarch Aethyta and her commandos had learned that the mansion was only the centerpiece of Donovan Hock's holdings on Bekenstein. For all intents and purposes, the man owned the planet by virtue of being the closest object of fear in the system. One did not become a major crime lord able to flaunt his influence in the face of a galactic power without the ability to inspire obedience through fear.

A covert extraction would be out of the question. As soon as they got what they needed, their exit would draw all kinds of unwanted attention. And then it would be a matter of how far Hock and his organization would go to hunt them down. Kasumi had already somewhat tweaked their noses before. Surely they'd redouble their efforts.

They nervously watched as three guards sauntered through the hallway far below, clad in heavy body armor and hefting rifles with the practiced ease of trained soldiers. And soldiers they were. Unlike hired mercenary guards from Eclipse or the Blood Pack, these guards did not laze about. They moved as a loose unit, the way a squad might to prevent one well-timed grenade from taking them all out, two abreast, one at the rear who turned every three to eight seconds to eyeball behind himself. Kasumi could hear their radio transmissions, but there was little of value. "Golf four clear," the rear guard below said, receiving two clicks in reply.

"These guys have their patrols scheduled and timed perfectly," Kasumi whispered.

Thane nodded in agreement. "They probably can triangulate transmissions inside the building. That's why they don't say their locations. We'll have to do something about that."

"Otherwise they'll find us the moment we call the commandos for our escape," the thief finished. She pinched her cheek thoughtfully. "Hock probably has a communications suite. If I can connect to that, I can try and establish a temporary channel within their network, and we could piggyback on their system so they can't localize it."

Thane blinked. "Piggyback?"

"Uh, use their existing structure for our needs," she explained. "Old figure of speech."

Thane's mouth quirked in slight amusement. Even in this day and age, translators still screwed up when it came to idioms and figures of speech. "Wait," he murmured, "couldn't you access the computer archives from the communications suite?"

"I could try," Kasumi bit her lip. "But then I would have to know the remote access protocols for the suite and any authorization codes Hock might have set up. If I can get root physical access, I can skim the data without worrying about all that. What I can do to make it easier for us to escape is get direct access, and have my program relay the information through the temporary channel to us. That way, we don't have to sit there while it leeches the data. We can even activate it from a distance so that if it triggers an alarm, we won't be stuck in the room if they lock it down."

"That still requires us to physically locate the archives," the assassin noted, "and puts us at greater risk of detection."

She shrugged in a manner that belied her unease. "So we take it slow. It's not like we're under a time limit."

 _I'm not so sure about that,_ the drell thought to himself.

* * *

The security chief raised an eyebrow and glanced distantly at the ceiling of the command booth.

"Anything wrong, sir?" a technician asked.

The man's lower lip twitched as he thought to himself. "No," he answered belatedly.

"Something on your mind then?"

The chief smirked in amusement. "You might say that."

 **The Citadel, Vakarian Residence**

"Dear, let me handle the dishes," Tallus said as he firmly held his wife down in her chair.

"I'm not an invalid anymore," Mirala Vakarian protested.

"Mom, even with the new treatments thanks to ExoGeni, the doctors said it will take years for you to recover," Solana reminded her.

"Maybe so," the elder female acknowledged, "but I intend to make the most of my life and enjoy doing what I can while I can. If there's one thing I've learned from lying half paralyzed on a hospital bed for the better part of a decade, it's that life is too short."

"Ugh," Solana threw up her hands. "Garrus, a little help here?!"

"Actually, I'm with mom on this one," the Spectre interjected, earning a triumphant look from the woman in question. "Let her do something. She's had enough of being treated like she's helpless."

"Gar-RUS!" Solana growled. "She's still in post-operational recovery! That's what the doctor said!"

"Well that's my family for you," Tallus commented to Tali as he wiped the crumbs off his plate into the trash. "Even when things are good, there's always an argument going on. What do you think?"

"They're really nice, sir," Tali agreed awkwardly, drawing a chuckle out of the C-Sec officer.

"Meeting your in-laws is always weird, isn't it?"

"Um…w-well I…" Tali was grateful for the opacity of her face mask.

"I think that you'd be perfect together, even if he is about ten years older than you," Tallus winked.

"Are you ever going to stop?" Garrus demanded as he walked into the kitchen. "You've been going on and on all throughout dinner!"

"It's my job as a parent."

The doorbell rang. "Coming!" There was the sound of the front door opening, and then Solana's voice called again. "Big brother? I think they want to see you."

"Who wants to see me?" the Spectre muttered as he walked over. "Oh hey Shepard. What's up? And who's this?"

"Hello Spectre Vakarian," a woman with dark hair and a very form-fitting white uniform greeted him. "My name is Agent Lawson. And I'm sure you remember Dr. T'Soni."

"Were we interrupting anything?" Shepard asked.

"Uh not really," Garrus answered, sweeping his eyes over the trio with a puzzled expression. "What's this about?"

"Business," Shepard answered. "Mind if we come inside for a moment?"

"Something I should know?" Tallus queried as the three women entered.

"Tell you later dad," Garrus replied, moving toward the basement.

"Time is critical, so I'll be blunt," Lawson began. "In the aftermath of your intervention on Horizon, we learned that the Shadow Broker was the one to inform the Collectors of the security arrangements on the independent colonies we reached out to. I have been assigned to locate the Shadow Broker in an effort to find any information concerning their cooperation with the Collectors. Dr. T'Soni has been helping me in these efforts. She told me that Spectre Tela Vasir is known to have a connection to the Shadow Broker. And we would like to know what she knows."

Garrus raised an eyebrow. "And you think I would have access to something like that? Spectres make oral reports to the Council. We rarely commit anything to record. Whoever she gets information from is her business."

"Perhaps," Lawson smiled. "But when that person is jeopardizing Council relations with a foreign power, exceptions might have to be made."

"Miranda was thinking that maybe you could talk with her as a fellow Spectre," Shepard added.

Something clicked behind Garrus's eyeballs. _Miranda…didn't Shepard mention that name before? Yeah, right after we dealt with Garm._ He shrugged. "I can try. Vasir isn't really known for being talkative."

"Then suggest to her that the Shadow Broker has made an enemy of the Alliance, and that it would be best if she didn't get dragged into this," Miranda said as her smile turned cold.

"Miranda, there's no need to go hardball," Shepard warned.

"Erin, the Broker is working with the Reapers to some degree. This is a galactic spymaster with information on half the galaxy who is volunteering it to the enemy. This is a massive security threat that needs to be dealt with as soon as possible. Playing nice is not on the priority list."

 _First name basis, eh? I bet you're just like Shepard in the Psionics department,_ Garrus thought to himself.

"We are from the same program, yes," Miranda confirmed, peeling back her lips in a dangerous grin as Garrus recoiled slightly.

"Did you just-"

"-read your mind? Obviously."

"You know that's rude," Shepard sighed.

Miranda shrugged. "I find politeness is often a casualty when time is of the essence. If you can talk to her and pass along any information to Shepard, I would appreciate the help."

"I'll see what I can do," Garrus agreed cautiously.

As she followed Miranda out, Liara's gaze lingered on Shepard while the red-head remained behind with Garrus's family. She'd wanted to say something, but this meeting had been all business. For five years, she'd waited for a chance, and now it had slipped by. She couldn't help the slight feeling of jealousy when she saw Tali, knowing that the quarian girl got to spend time on the Normandy instead of her.

 **Unknown Location**

If there was one thing he regretted about his decision, it was the isolation. After accepting the opportunity to become a Jaeger, he was separated from the crew he'd presided over, and from the commanding officer he'd had a slight crush on from afar. Nowadays, his primary source of interaction was his partner slash training officer, and the man was hardly a source of healthy interaction.

Kaidan found that he much preferred the isolation of his quarters to any sort of interaction with the criminal Kai Leng, and he hated that someone so undisciplined and psychopathic was his "superior" of sorts in the field. But it couldn't be helped. Leng was a far more experienced special operative, whereas he'd spent much more of his own career at a desk rather than in the field wearing armor and carrying a weapon.

Not that either task would bother him anymore. He had always been amazed how easily Shepard moved around in full gear. Now with his own enhancements, he didn't even notice the extra weight, and his weapon felt abnormally light in his arms. More than that, he felt almost invincible with the strength at his disposal, at least when he wasn't sparring with Leng in the gym.

Their ship was still searching for that blasted Leviathan of Dis that some Hegemony Remnant group was working on. The scout frigate had arrived at the previous coordinates only to find freshly demolished scaffolding and signs of rapid departure. The damned thing had been moved.

So now they were wasting their time moving sector by sector in search of the wreckage. Smart money was that they couldn't have gotten too far away.

 _"Monarch, Ghost, report to the bridge."_

Kaidan sighed and got up from his meditation position. This had been ongoing for the past two months. In all likelihood, it would be a false alarm.

"Yes?" he asked as he approached the ship commander.

"Sir, I think we've found it,"

"You _think_?" Leng snapped, his hand twitching toward his hip despite the lack of his sword.

"See for yourself," the lieutenant commander gestured toward the tac screen. There was a large blotch that the computer was having trouble classifying. However, it had managed to detect hull traces similar to that of Sovereign from the Citadel attack. That had resulted in a notice to the sensor officer, who confirmed it with a manual inspection. "Shall we move closer for a visual?"

Kaidan thought for a moment before shaking his head. "Send out probes first. I want to be real careful about alerting the enemy."

* * *

Insectoid eyes swept over the sensor readouts. Clawed appendages scampered over the displays and chittering voices relayed orders in an alien tongue. They had been discovered. It was too soon. Contingency plans must be executed. Then the ship felt the enormous presence of its masters attention. They acknowledged their new orders and the altered command structure. Once again, direct intervention was deemed necessary.

 **The various schemes and events are starting to pile up.  
**

 **Does Morinth's rant remind you of anything?**

 **Morinth and Liara are both attracted to Shepard as a result of melding with her. Morinth is more influenced by the fact that Shepard was both the one to teach her control and the first to meld successfully with her. Liara on the other hand got a glimpse into Shepard's past. She sees Shepard as a strong, tough, self-assured independent woman, the complete opposite of herself. Shepard is someone that Liara aspires to emulate. She's jealous of that self confidence.**

 **I'm not great with anything like romance or relationships, so bear with me on this.**

* * *

 **Finwee, to answer your question, we have to examine the Avatars from XCOM 2 in detail.**

 **The Avatars in-game are incomplete. They were flawed. For some reason or other, they could not handle an Ethereal's full power. They were still very much powerful. The Commander's Avatar clashed with three astral Ethereals and the feedback destroyed the underwater base. But that was the combined clash of essentially four Ethereals.**

 **Yes, four. Assuming that XCOM Declassified is in the same verse as EW and XCOM 2, the events of the game strongly suggest that Asaru, the player Ethereal in Declassified, stuck around and fused itself to the Commander in EW and XCOM 2. Of all the personnel for the Ethereals to chase after, ONLY the Commander was captured and used as a wetware cpu to control ADVENT forces. And on the last level of 2, the Ethereal Angelis keeps saying things like "return to us" to the Commander.**

 **Also, the Avatars are conceptualized as flesh puppets for the Ethereals/Elders. Without a guiding mind, they are useless. Normally, that mind is Ethereal. So how would the ostensibly "human" Commander have the psionic strength to counter three astral Ethereals? Unless they themselves have the mind of an Ethereal?**

 **That establishes something of a baseline power level for an Avatar to compare to General Summers. The incompleted Avatar can teleport, fire a wave of energy and summon a vortex of energy. General Summers can do the latter two as well. But he was able to no-sell a capital-ship grade hydrodynamic ferrofluid cannon blast when he was at full power. The Avatars in-game can be worn down by small-arms fire.**

 **A perfected Avatar would be godly, far outstripping even the General. His psionics, with the benefit of nearly two hundred years of training, just begin to approach the level of an Ethereal, who as a species have developed their powers for eons. Aside from that, his body is still human. He is not enhanced like Shepard. By contrast, even the in-game Avatars are clearly superhuman. What they might lack in straight up psionic power compared to Summers, they'd make up for it with their inhuman durability.**

 **Short answer: Summers vs XCOM 2 Avatar goes to Summers if he isn't mentally exhausted. Summers vs the theoretical "completed" Avatar is a stomp for the Avatar.**


	41. Loose Threads

**Apologies for the wait. Computer troubles and military life screwed me over.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Thirty-nine

 **Citadel, Alliance Embassy**

Major Bailey coldly eyeballed the heavily armed and armored asari even as Captain Anderson told him over the radio to let the woman enter the building.

"Sir, she refuses to disclose her reason for being here. That's a security issue."

 _"You're not cleared for it, Major. Rest assured, there won't be any trouble. The General is here, and so is Captain Shepard. Anything happens, it'll be on us."_

"Understood," the garrison commander replied. "Don't take it personally, ma'am, but I hope you leave as soon as possible."

"Believe me," Tela Vasir commented as she moved past the officer and the four marine guards, "the feeling is mutual."

In her opinion, the lobby was a perfect example of how the Alliance conducted itself. Her trained eye spotted no fewer than twenty prepared firing positions for the garrison to use in the event of an assault. The covert armored paneling was placed in such a way as to protect defenders while denying any advancing enemies a similar advantage. Her omni-tool highlighted a few mass anomalies on the second floor balcony, which were the perfect size to hide a few crew-served weapons. And there was the waffled texture of the large flowerpots around the lobby. It would seem an odd choice of aesthetics until one noticed the low grade of the metal. They were clearly meant as traps for the enemy. The material would only stop pistol fire, but definitely not the firepower of an anti-infantry heavy machinegun. And finally, there was an abundance of trace nitrogen on it. The flowerpots were really very large disguised fragmentary explosive devices.

The central desk, manned by two low-ranking embassy personnel, was similarly constructed. Anyone foolish enough or capable enough to capture the central area would merely sign the death warrants of their comrades. _And people never quite believe me when I say the Alliance is completely devoted to war._

"Spectre Tela Vasir," she said to the woman behind the desk. "I have an appointment with Captain David Anderson."

The civilian's gaze was remarkably like the major's: polite, but with deep suspicion.

"The officer outside was ordered to let me in."

Still holding the gaze, the woman pressed a button underneath the desk, and an elevator door opened. "Third floor. Anywhere else will get you arrested."

"Thanks for that," the Spectre muttered as she moved past.

"Spectre Vasir, we meet again," Anderson greeted as the elevator disgorged the asari.

"Spare me the pleasantries. Where's Garrus?"

"Don't you sound pissed off today," Garrus noted as he stepped into view.

"You told me to come here, cutting into my valuable time where I could be investigating an increasingly militant anti-human movement," Vasir fired back. "You didn't tell me why, which makes me think this could be a waste of my time. So excuse me if I'm a little irritated."

"It's about your connections to the Shadow Broker," Anderson cut in. "You know him. We want him."

"He's the one who told the Collectors about the Alliance's aid to the colonies that were attacked," the turian explained.

"And how solid is that information?" Vasir demanded.

"We found communication logs on the Collector ship that the Normandy destroyed. Dr. Solus from the STG was the one to decrypt them."

"I know what you're going to ask for next," the captain said. "Confirmation. Just ignore that for a second and think about what that would mean, finding out that the Collectors are at least aware of the Shadow Broker. From what I understand, he's an independent spymaster with connections and intelligence sources on par with those of a government service. But he doesn't have a military to hide behind like either of our civilizations do."

Vasir frowned. "You're saying that the Collectors, and by extension, the Reapers would have easy access to our highest secrets."

"Not the Alliance's secrets, obviously," Garrus corrected. "But our people would be screwed over pretty well."

"This means both of our governments have a vested interest in dealing with this rogue spymaster," Anderson continued.

"Assuming that the Collectors are connected to the Reapers, and the Reapers are a legitimate threat," Vasir fired back, before raising her hands in defense. "I'm not saying I don't believe you, but it's easier to convince ground pounders that threats exist than it is for politicians."

"And there's a reason we're not talking to the politicians right now. Actually, two reasons. The other one is that politicians make a living by talking about things, whether they know about them or not. That makes for leaks. For obvious reasons, we don't want any hint of our manhunt for the Broker to leak out."

"So you can't tell the Council about this, especially Valern," Garrus added.

Vasir tilted her head toward the ceiling and groaned. "And I thought the biggest thing I had to worry about was the anti-human extremist groups on the Citadel."

Anderson's eyes narrowed. "Care to elaborate on that?"

"Long story short, there are a lot of people with hard feelings against the Alliance, and they've been getting louder and more militant since the Geth attack five years ago. One sticking point is how your ships used nukes inside the Citadel and disrupted people's livelihoods for over a year. We have reports that some of these people are making requests through Omega's black market for weapons, mercenaries, and other restricted supplies. And then there's also a rising number of personal attacks on humans in Citadel space." She shrugged. "This kind of stuff has been escalating for years."

"First I've heard about this," the captain frowned. "I wonder why this got left out of the briefing."

"That would be because I made a decision in my capacity as the Ambassador to allow the Council to handle things, seeing as the humans at risk are Council immigrants," Udina explained as he rounded the corner from his office. "Our diplomatic relations are poor enough as it is without us flying off the handle whenever humans are in anyway inconvenienced."

"How's that going by the way?" Garrus asked.

"The current pain in the blue is a turian community leader named Joram Talid," the asari answered. "So far, he's skirting the line between freedom of expression and incitement of violence. His finances are also a creative mess. Rumor is he has connections to the Hegemony Remnant. That's what flagged him for investigation." She turned toward Anderson. "And the only reason I'm telling you this is because I owe you for saving me five years ago. So please don't have your people scoop him up. Right now, he's our problem."

"And I can make that restriction an order if need be," the ambassador interjected. "Mister Vakarian, you and I have an appointment with the Council in the next half hour. And David, there's a message for you in communications."

"Well that's my cue to leave," Garrus noted. "See you around, Vasir."

"Watch your back," the woman smirked. "I hear it's getting a lot of abuse lately."

"Very funny."

 **Bekenstein, Hock Mansion**

Her heart was beating so fast she actually felt somewhat light-headed. And the patrol seemed to take forever to move away from the office. But they finally did, and she slowly looked back down at her portable computer. The trick here was to temporarily shut down the communication line between the terminal and the basement archive so she could physically splice the line and insert a repeater. She had sat in one place for more than a day analyzing the data traffic to see if anyone was actively monitoring the system. Now, they had decided to make their move. Aethyta's commandos were sitting on alert and ready to go in and extract them, and Thane was sitting tight near the basement archive waiting to establish the direct link.

Kasumi swallowed nervously and tapped the final command into the program she'd constructed. _Well, it's now or never, Keiji…_

She braced herself for a series of network alarms, but all that happened was that the terminal shut off its connection. She exhaled with relief, and then moved over to the hard line. There was no time to lose. Everything had already been prepped. Her clammy fingers fumbled with the device, and she swore viciously at the loss of valuable seconds before assembling it around the line. In the extremely unlikely event that they extracted without detection, the device was hidden well enough to evade the most cursory inspection of the office, but no more than that. She eyed her computer as she finished. Not ten seconds later, the line filled with activity once more.

Elation flooded her. She'd done it.

"I've made the tap," she announced into the line. "Just waiting on you."

* * *

Thane didn't bother to answer with more than a double click of acknowledgement. Now it was his turn.

The room was covered in thermal scanners. On the surface, not a smart idea, since most computer servers still produced a great deal of heat. But these were top of the line. Room temperature superconductor printed boards and nanoscopic transistor and resistor arrays that produced almost no heat to speak of. The room was chilled slightly, to prevent any spikes of energy from raising the ambient temperature above the critical level, thus preventing the computers from operating properly. With the computers and the rest of the room reading well below body temperature, anyone inside would show up like a beacon.

But today was, according to a log in the terminal above, the day where this part of the system would be undergoing a system check. That meant the sensors would be offline for a short period. The window between the time the technicians left and when they came back online would be the only opportunity for him to spike the archives.

Unfortunately, there was no telling when the techs would leave, and he would have a scant two minutes to plant the spike and get out.

Finally, two hours after the thief had messaged him, the maintenance guys packed up their inspection kit and signaled the guards that they were ready to leave. They took their time, inured to the existence of any threat by sheer repetition. One of the men tapped a code into the system panel as they left, beginning the activation process. That was the signal.

The drell scrambled across the floor to the master server bank. With deft fingers, he pried off the access cover and located the ideal port. He slotted the device deep inside the bank, and then clicked his comm.

"Spike in place."

 _"Copy. I'm getting a good read. Beginning download. Damn, there is a lot of data here…"_

"Tell me later," Thane replied as he closed the panel as it had been and made a beeline for the exit.

 _"It's encrypted, but that shouldn't be-what? The download stopped?!"_

The assassin felt a chill. "Did it fail?"

 _"I'm still plugged into the system, but something's denying me access! How the hell is this possible?"_

"They know we're here," the drell breathed.

 _"Shit!"_

"Send the signal. I'm coming as fast as I can."

"Too bad you aren't fast enough," an unfamiliar voice made him freeze.

 _"Who was that?! What's going on?!"_

Thane raised his hands and slowly turned in the hallway to face the man. "Mister Hock, I presume," he said with a calm that belied his mental state.

The white-suited human with the pistol leveled at his solar plexus smirked. "Correct, mister Krios."

 **Citadel, Alliance Embassy**

"So what exactly are they doing to my ship?" Shepard asked.

 _"Our technicians will be installing a modification to the Normandy that will render it immune to Mass Effect disruption,"_ Dr. Tygan explained. _"If you remember our explanation of how the enemy device interfered with your previous ship's wormhole drive, it used Dark Energy to destabilize space-time, preventing any wormhole from being wide enough or sustained enough to pass through."_

 _"The Channeler, as we call it, uses its own Dark Energy to forcibly stabilize space time for the duration of the wormhole opening."_ Dr. Vahlen continued. _"It uses much less energy than that alien device because it will only affect the area directly around the ship. So long as the Normandy is sufficiently far away from the device, the Channeler can overpower the device and allow you to jump away safely."_

"Ma'am, what about if the enemy focuses the device like our Tractor Beam technology?" Pressly asked.

 _"The Channeler can adjust output for that scenario. It would simply require more power or distance."_

 _"Remember the distances that space combat takes place at, Commander,"_ Tygan added. _"A simple change in vector would easily throw off their lockup for a time."_

"How long will it take?" the captain wondered. "We have things we need to get back to ASAP."

 _"Installation and system familiarization should take two days. After that, you can do a dry run test at any time."_

"I assume you intend to produce this as a retrofit for the rest of the Navy, right?" General Summers rumbled.

 _"To outfit all combat units would take over a decade,"_ Tygan said, shaking his head. _"I would recommend priority to be given to the Navy's fast response or scout units."_

 _"Captain, there is a downside to this modification,"_ Vahlen added. _"The energy cost of the Channeler will greatly increase drive recharge time when used. Keep that in mind._ "

"I will," the red-head promised.

 _"Good luck, Captain."_

The hologram winked out and the trio stepped out of the secure room, where Udina and Garrus were waiting.

"So how did it go?" Summers queried.

"While they aren't happy with the outcome, they are willing to accept our proposal of passing along anything we learn from the Leviathan of Dis," the ambassador replied. "In return, they will share what they know of the Collectors."

"According to the STG, those guys are usually seen using the Omega-4 Relay," Garrus cut in. "No one knows where it goes to. Every time someone's tried to explore it, they disappear, never to be seen again."

"Sounds like it goes somewhere dangerous," Shepard noted.

"I'll have the director send a team to investigate the relay," the general commented.

"I predicted that you'd do that," Udina sighed. "The Council agreed not to protest if Alliance ships are seen around that relay. You're welcome, by the way."

"Appreciate it," the reply came with palpable irony.

"Well Garrus, we're sticking around a bit longer while the Normandy has some unscheduled maintenance. Gives you a bit more time to enjoy with your family." Shepard's smile turned slightly wicked. "And gives Tali more time to know her future in-laws."

"Give me a break," Garrus moaned. "You and my dad…"

"Everyone can see it, Vakarian. EVERYONE."

 **Bekenstein, Hock Mansion**

Kasumi listened with wide eyes to the man who likely ordered Keiji's death over her comm.

 _"I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell me who hired you to infiltrate my residence,"_ Hock's cultured voice echoed, laced with sarcasm.

 _"No more than you'd be willing to explain why you are here, but not your guards."_ A slight part of her admired Thane's calm and collected manner, especially in his most dire situation.

Hock laughed. _"Well in my case, I see little point. You will find out soon enough. And perhaps your family will as well."_

 _"You'd go after them?"_ Thane demanded.

 _"Naturally. In this business, one must set an example for others, pour encourageur les autres. You understand, of course."_ The matter-of-fact delivery cemented Kasumi's mental image of the man. This was a cold hearted murderer. Of that she had no doubt.

 _"And you think I didn't take precautions against that?"_

 _"Mister Krios, Irikah and Kolyat can and will be found. My reach is quite long, longer than you could possibly imagine."_

* * *

Thane's visage concealed turmoil bordering on panic. _How the hell does he know their names?!_ "And how long do you think I could imagine it is?"

Hock smiled coldly, but did not answer. Thane began running his mind through drills and scenarios.

"The Shadow Broker says hello."

The man scoffed. "Please, don't insult my intelligence. The Broker would not be so foolish as to send one or two individuals into my home like this, nor would his people be competent enough to make it this far."

"So you didn't know we were here from the beginning?"

Hock ignored the question. "I see that your partner holds a grudge against me for some reason. A pity for her. She could have escaped to live in obscurity, but she simply came here to die."

Thane blinked. "Wait, how do you know that?"

The building shook suddenly, and a thundering boom echoed from above. Dust shook loose from the ceiling.

"What was that?!" Hock demanded, raising his free hand to his ear.

 _"Sir, we're under attack!"_

"What?! Who in the-"

Thane blazed forward, igniting his biotics as he went, and moving into a two-palmed empowered strike at the distracted human.

But Hock reacted impossibly fast. In fact, if the drell's eyes weren't mistaken, the man had begun moving slightly before he did.

The biotic thrust flew to the side, grazing the man's white suit jacket. A pistol shot echoed down the hall, flying well over the assassin's head. Thane countered by slicing horizontally with his left hand, clipping the pistol and tearing it from the crime lord's hand. It clattered against a wall and vanished as the hallway lights went to emergency red.

Hock reacted by spinning right and drawing a knife from his jacket in a split second in an attempt to literally cut down the drell. Thane caught his wrist, preventing the blade from transiting across his eyes and bringing the knife overhead in a circle before firing a pulse from his now chambered left hand that pushed the human backward.

Astonishingly, the human twisted with the momentum into a one-handed somersault, landing on his feet before pushing off from his position into a deadly lunge.

Thane parried the thrust, but Hock merely allowed his arm to fold, moving into a rushing elbow that almost bowled the assassin over. Thane spun himself out of the way, only to gasp as he felt a sharp slicing pain from his right leg. He spun back to gain some distance and glanced down. There was a shallow cut on his thigh. And Hock's knife had an almost imperceptible line of blood along the edge.

Experience told him what had happened. When his arm had folded, Hock had used his left hand to force a rapid change in the momentum of the blade. As he'd gone past, he'd pushed, forcing the edge to come forward again, catching Thane in the leg.

But by all accounts, Hock was a brain in his organization. There was nothing to suggest physical capability or experience. To react that fast in that way spoke of a scary level of physical and combat training that he supposedly lacked. Thane had taken decades to reach his own level of competence. So how was this criminal mastermind pushing him like this?

Thane pushed that thought away and moved to take the initiative again. He fired biotic pulses from his legs, shooting forward much faster than anyone could normally move. He was rewarded with a slight widening in Hock's eyes, but the man again reacted impossibly fast, dropping low and rolling so that Thane sailed over him, unable to stop in time.

Hock threw the knife as he got to his feet. The blade embedded itself in the wall, to the shock of the assassin. The slight pause was all the crime lord needed to pick up the pistol again and bring it to level.

Thane charged, snatching the knife as he went, and throwing it back, forcing Hock to dodge and miss his shot. The drell closed in and grabbed the pistol before unleashing a pulse from his hand that crushed the weapon. Now, the fight devolved to hand-to-hand.

Hock released the ruined weapon, spinning left and backhanding the drell in the shoulder. Thane fell sideways into a roll, bringing his right palm forward and firing another pulse to push Hock back.

But Hock reversed his spin, pulling his upper body out of the way to dodge before coming forward and bringing his right palm straight down onto the drell's shoulder.

Pain flared as the human put half his body weight onto the shoulder joint. Thane clamped down on the pain and swung his left arm up toward Hock's face and fired yet another pulse, forcing the human to get off and allowing the assassin to roll to his feet.

Thane could feel his body protesting his rapid usage of biotics. This situation was going from horrible to so much worse. He lunged forward again, but Hock caught both his arms and brought him in close. In an instant before they literally butted heads, the drell saw the human's eyes glow purple.

And suddenly, it made sense. How he knew about his family. How he knew about Kasumi. How he reacted so fast, like he knew what was going to happen next. Donovan Hock was a psionic.

* * *

Feena Val'lar was growing more and more unhappy with every passing moment. This was supposed to be a simple smash and grab. Smash in, and grab the human and the drell away from pursuing forces.

Within the first five seconds, that plan had gone tits up. The enemy reaction force had come unbelievably fast. The thief wasn't answering her comm, and the guards were responding with the kind of competence expected from a professional military rather than corporate security personnel.

"Miss Goto, you and your partner need to get over here right now! The longer we're here, the worse it gets!"

Four of the guards were down. Four. And one of her commandos had been unlucky enough to eat a headshot from one of them. In any other situation, the ratio would have been twice that, but these guards had recovered very fast from the start of the fight. They were now making it near impossible to advance further into the building.

"Damn it! Anything on the comm?"

Her second in command shook her head. "Either she's jammed, or she's dead. We should probably pull out now!"

"New contact!" another asari called.

Hock's forces were caught off guard as Kasumi materialized off to the side and killed the two closest men.

"Cover her!" Feena screamed, directing a hail of protective fire toward the humans trying to aim at the thief.

The woman ducked and weaved toward the shuttle. She was joined by the other commandos as they fell back to cover for her.

"Where's the drell?!"

Kasumi shook her head. "He's trapped."

Feena swore. "Fuck, we can't get him out! We'll have to leave him!"

"Hock is going to kill him!" Kasumi shrieked.

"If he's lucky! Get onboard!"

* * *

Hock exhaled deeply as he stood over the bloody drell, knife in hand. "I do have to admit, that was the best workout anyone has ever given me, mister Krios. Points for effort, but you're not leaving. Your friend may get away, but we'll find her."

Thane coughed a wad of blood as he lay on the ground. "So glad to be of service…" he gasped.

Hock smiled. "I'm in a generous mood, so I'll make you an offer. If you tell me who hired you, I'll spare your family."

"…forgive me…if I don't take your word…for it…"

"Make no mistake, you _will_ tell me one way or another."

Thane allowed a smile to cross his face. "…somehow…I doubt that…"

Hock's eyes widened and he stepped back as Thane's body lit up bright blue. Then he was thrown backward as an explosion rocked the hall.

The man swore as he climbed to his feet, allowing his mask to slip and his foul mood to show. The drell had immolated himself rather than be interrogated. Damn it!

He heard a loud screech from above, and slapped his comm. "What is going on up there?!" he demanded.

 _"Sir, we were attacked by a group of asari commandos. They picked up a woman with a hood before leaving the premises."_

"Asari commandos?" Hock mused. _The Citadel? No, it wouldn't be them. The commandos answer to individual matriarchs._ "Did they have any identifying markings?"

 _"None that we could see on the shuttle they arrived in. Some of the guards reported killing one of them, but the body is nowhere to be found."_

"Of course not. That would be too easy." The crime lord rubbed his forehead. "Begin sanitation procedures. I want the organization off this planet in two days. Now tell me if they got anything before we shut down their network access."

There was a long pause. _"Sir, what little data they got was mostly parceled and encrypted."_

"'Mostly,' chief?"

 _"…they managed to get two complete encrypted documents...from the Third Contact project…"_

"And what documents would those be?" Hock asked with a dangerously calm voice.

 _"…the experiment logs, sir…"_

Hock turned and threw the knife into the wall all the way up to the hilt. To his credit, he didn't curse or scream. Only a strangled hiss of rage escaped his throat. Finally, he elected to speak again. "I want every effort made to hunt down that little thief before she spills to the galaxy what we did to Saren Arterius. NOW!"

 _Codex: Channeler_

 _Developed as a counter to the device used to effect the destruction of the Normandy prowler, the Channeler is so named because, rather like irrigation compared to a natural water flow, it allows artificial control over the flow of space-time._

 _The device floods the area around the ship with Dark Energy in a pattern that "smooths out" the temporal fabric. This effect overpowers any existing disturbances, and allows the ship's computer to predictably control the opening and duration of the wormhole for the jump._

 _The Channeler requires an exorbitant amount of Element Zero and a great deal of electrical power for use. As a retrofit mod, any ships equipped with this unit suffer a significant penalty to jump recharge time when used._

 **And so it begins. The slow killing off of your favorite characters. Wave goodbye to Thane Krios. Now who will be next?  
**

 **What do you think the Third Contact project involved? And how was Saren connected?**

 **Tela Vasir in this story gives up information voluntarily rather than fight to protect the Broker for the same reason she did the latter in ME2: practicality. In there, she got vital information for her job that far outweighed the risks or detriments. In this story, it's the opposite: the Shadow Broker's very existence places the Council races in jeopardy.**

 **But it goes deeper than that. You'll see how deep when Miranda next shows up.**

 **Just to clarify, the Alliance does not know that the Collectors were the ones who attacked the Normandy. There is some suspicion, but no direct evidence. That will come later with the second ambush.**


	42. Infiltration

**I need to stop slacking off and start cranking out more chapters. Otherwise, I'll miss my two deadlines. I hope to end the ME2 section by New Years, and have my next planned nasty little April Fools joke ready on time.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Forty

 **Unknown Location**

They had waited long enough. According to an encrypted message, there was a task force enroute that would arrive in three hours. The prowler that the two Jaegers were using would have a significant amount of backup. Now was the time for them to infiltrate the Leviathan and clear out any Batarians or other forces that might be there.

One of the things the Alliance had learned in the past five years of studying Reaper technology was that Mutons appeared to be immune to indoctrination. They had tentatively conducted test studies first with individuals, then with small groups to judge each race's vulnerability. Sectoids became belligerent, and humans succumbed over a period of weeks, but the Muton subjects never changed their behavior. Kaidan and his fellow Jaeger would be leading a squad of Muton shock troops to secure the massive hulk.

In addition, they would bring along three Cydonian MEC soldiers. With Cydonian anatomy being a relative unknown, these three engineers on loan from Litrella were inhabiting custom-made bodies with extra attention given to hardening against EMF sources. They also had a unique countermeasure recently developed for use against nanites. Their role on the team would be to analyze enemy technology and handle interfacing. While the MEC bodies gave them biotic capability, the Cydonians would only use them in a defensive capability, providing themselves and the rest of the team kinetic shielding if necessary.

The stealth shuttle slowly closed the distance to its "drop" point, where the squad would jump and land on the exterior of the Reaper before blasting their way into the hull with cutting charges. Then the jump bay depressurized and opened to the void, allowing the assault team to jet across empty space to their soon-to-be insertion point.

As he landed, Kaidan stretched out his senses, looking for any enemy presence directly beneath them. He looked over at Kai Leng, who shook his head curtly. He turned and nodded to the Muton captain, who gestured to two lower-ranked soldiers and indicated a nice flat patch of hull plate. They unraveled the detcord and affixed it in place with a gel-tamped plate. Everyone stepped back, with the Cydonians producing domed kinetic barriers to protect them from anything unexpected. Finally, the plate blew with a muffled rumble that could be felt through their magnetized boots.

Kai Leng took the opportunity to crawl through first, using his blade to shave anything sharp or otherwise loosely attached around the hole. Kaidan waited as the rest of the team went through before going in last.

The corridor they ended up in was surprisingly spacious, almost enough for two mutons to stand side-by-side. Looking down both directions, the team noted that they were safe for the moment. Leng tapped his comm. "Naiad, Ghost. Insertion successful."

 _"Copy, sir. Be advised: no life signs detected in your vicinity, but we're getting massive readings near the core structure. Also, our sensors are showing a moderate level of electronic interference from the Reaper itself."_

Kaidan raised an eyebrow. "We aren't picking up any static through the relay," he commented, referring to the mobile antenna array situated on the hull just outside.

"The interference could be a localized phenomenon due to incomplete repairs or a makeshift communications setup inside the structure," one of the Cydonian MECs answered. "We simply aren't close enough for it to affect our network yet."

"~Searching this ship will take a great deal of time. Let us set that concern aside until we encounter it.~" the Muton captain rumbled.

"My thoughts exactly," Leng agreed with a dismissive air. "You have our locator beacons, right?"

 _"Affirmative, sir."_

"I'll go on ahead. The rest of you split off to cover more ground. Naiad, coordinate the search." _You would all slow me down anyway,_ the assassin thought darkly as he vanished, engaging his cloak.

 _"Roger. Good hunting, sir."_

Kaidan frowned, displeased with how his fellow Jaeger ditched the team without a second thought. But this was no time to get into a conflict over it.

"~I will lead one team. My second will take another.~" the captain said, already divvying up the labor.

"Sounds good. I'll take the third engineer along, and we'll go it solo."

"~Very well~" the muton approximated a shrug before hefting his plasma autocannon and moving off.

 _"Remember to plant comm relays as you go,"_ the ship operations coordinator reminded them.

"Copy. Moving out."

 **The Citadel, Normandy dock**

"Everything finished?" Shepard asked.

"Yes ma'am," the head contractor announced, setting down his tool case to wipe his brow. "Ship's ready to go when you are. We've briefed the mechanics and engineers on what to look out for and how to maintain the sonuvabitch. My boys don't need to stick around any longer, and you can get underway."

"Appreciate it."

The former enlisted man snapped a salute. "In Vigilo Confido, ma'am."

The red-head returned it. "In Vigilo Confido." Then she turned to walk up the boarding ramp with Pressly trailing behind her. "Finally, we can get moving again."

"Don't know about you ma'am, but these past three weeks of shore leave were just what we all needed to loosen up a bit."

The captain turned with a smirk. "Since when do you ever loosen up?"

"Fine, it's what most of us needed," the XO replied with a straight face. "especially the two senior engineers."

Shepard shook her head. "I don't know why Gabby and Kenneth don't just book a room and get it over with already."

"Regulations against fraternization."

Shepard groaned with slight exasperation. "Other than that."

"I know what you meant, ma'am. Besides, historically, Navy personnel tend to flout those regulations anyway."

"You didn't even blink when you said all that."

"Someone has to be straight around here."

Shepard noted how the surrounding crew had slowed what they were doing in to listen in. She grinned. "Are you implying I swing for the other team, Commander?" she called loudly.

Pressly's eyes flew wide open as the crew began snickering. "N-no ma'am, not at all! I was-"

Shepard laughed and shook his shoulder. "Gotcha, XO," she said before walking off.

The junior officer took a moment to compose himself. "With all due respect ma'am, I'm going to get you for that." A chorus of ooh's met that pronouncement, and Shepard slowly turned around.

"Is that a challenge I hear?" she queried with a mischievous smile.

"It's a promise." A louder round of ooh's from the crew.

Shepard's grin widened, and she congratulated herself on finally getting her second in command to unwind from his usual uptight self. "Bring it on."

The thumping of combat boots on the deck made the XO turn around. "That sounded interesting," Garrus said as he adjusted his bag over his shoulder, nodding to Shepard's figure as the elevator doors closed behind her. "How are you going to get the drop on her when she's a supersoldier?"

"Oh I'll find a way," the commander assured the turian with a smirk, already making plans.

Garrus cocked his head. "Now who are you and what did you do with the tight-assed Commander I know?"

* * *

The turian watched as the Alliance warship moved free of its docking clamps before rotating in place for its exit. "If only we'd had a little more time," he muttered, contemplating the lost opportunity.

 _"Sir, we just brought in another shipment."_

He turned away and walked into a dark alley. "I'll be right there. Tell me how close this gets us."

 _"We should only need a few more trips before we have enough supplies."_

"What's the status on our scout teams?"

 _"…they can't get closer than one kilometer without running into either the embassy guards or C-Sec."_

The turian seethed. _Damned humans and their collaborators._ "Have them keep trying. Be aggressive if they have to. Hell, get Talid to organize some riot or protest. We need eyes on that building."

 _"Sir, won't that-"_

"Are you questioning me?" the turian snarled.

 _"N-no sir! I'll contact him right now!"_

"See that you do." He moved further along toward the Wards districts, pausing to scowl at the Presidium in the distance. "You'll pay," he growled, thinking of the main inhabitants. "You dance to their tune and you don't even know it. Live in peace with the humans? Never!" He reached into his coat and fingered a worn and ragged patch inside his pocket. Said patch was the rank insignia of a captain in the Hierarchy. "Not after what they did to me," former captain Vyrnnus vowed, his eyes smoldering a dangerous deep blue.

 **Shanxi, Immigration facility**

Captain Imad Mahari often nursed some feelings of resentment. Against what, even he couldn't specify. He knew he really didn't have a reason to complain. As a psionic in the military, he enjoyed a great deal of privilege and security that others would kill for. But he felt that this civil posting was a waste. He had joined to see action. Instead, he was relegated to the rear echelon.

He grumbled into his morning coffee before shaking his head and turning to deal with the files on his desk. Managing immigrants was a lengthy and tedious process. The Alliance demanded that everyone be interviewed, scrutinized, medically cleared, and have an in-depth history before even allowing them into the restricted habitat zone directly outside. His job was to use his abilities to weed out potential spies and miscreants as well as confirm each individual's mental state as they were interviewed to determine the truth.

He finished the stack and set it aside before withdrawing his service weapon and badge. These he fixed to his belt before grabbing his hat and stepping out of his office. Two militiamen were waiting for him.

"Big batch of them today, sir."

Mahari sighed as they moved off with him leading as the ranking member. "Naturally. Anything I should know about?"

One of the men shrugged, even though the captain couldn't see it. "There's an awful lot of them that came here with no identification and said they were fleeing someplace called Omega. Intelligence said not to worry too much. Guess they're keeping something a secret."

"Fucking spooks," the captain muttered.

"Amen to that."

The trio arrived at their station and began looking at names and files. Ordering them just so, the captain nodded and allowed his day to begin in earnest. One by one, each individual from the holding area was called into the room away from the crowd and interviewed, medically checked, and screened by the psionic officer before being sent off to register for lodging. He stretched and cracked his back against his chair as the sixth individual moved off to register. "Call the next one in."

This one was an asari. The moment she entered the room, Captain Mahari stiffened. His senses were picking up something very odd and unfamiliar. She was different from the ones who had just passed through. And her eyes…something in them seemed dead, almost like a puppet's face.

He noted that the corporal and the sergeant had twitched as well. The sergeant was slowly drifting toward the communications panel and the alarm switch, while the corporal had already positioned himself forward to meet any sort of threat. Discreetly, the captain began reaching for his sidearm.

"Miss He'lana, was it? Would you mind taking a seat?"

The asari's dead eyes moved between the three men, but she stayed standing.

"Ma'am, do you understand me? Please take-"

The captain was interrupted with a hideous shriek as the asari summoned a blue aura and lunged at him.

The corporal reacted instantly by shoulder checking the deranged woman against the wall. Simultaneously, the captain stood and drew his pistol while the sergeant slapped the alarm. A deafening whine erupted throughout the facility, startling the guards outside the room.

The asari pushed herself off the wall by flaring her biotic aura and swiped at the corporal, who caught her arm. He maneuvered it straight out to the side while pivoting his torso and slamming his left palm against her shoulder blade, forcing her to bend at the waist. He allowed his right knee to bend, dropping the woman face down on the hard concrete floor.

Mahari moved to the side as the sergeant withdrew a weighted baton. "Don't move!"

Another shriek, and another blue flare threw the corporal off and against the far wall. The asari scrambled to her feet just as Mahari burned a hole through her left thigh. She stumbled, but did not slow down.

"Yaaargh!" The sergeant lunged with a vicious backhanded swing that landed solidly against her cheekbone. Then he gripped it with both hands and spun into a brutal overhead smash that terminated at some very bony clawed hands.

Time seemed to freeze, allowing the militia sergeant to get a good look at the monster asari. Her flesh was rapidly turning a necrotic gray-blue, and had already flaked off her hands, exposing bone and some strange blue cybernetics. The blow to her face had dislodged some decaying flesh from her cheek, and trace amounts of blood flecked off.

The captain fired again, this time at the asari's head. The beam burned through her skull, dropping her corpse to the ground and almost causing the sergeant to take a nosedive.

As one, both men turned toward the corporal. "Phillipe!" the sergeant exclaimed, moving over. "Are you alright?"

"I'll be fine!" the junior man hissed through gritted teeth as he was hauled to his feet. "What the hell was that?!"

"I don't know," Mahari shook his head before turning and firing a few more times to be safe. "But it's dead now."

* * *

The ancient intelligence felt the equivalent of disappointment. The thralls were detected. How unfortunate. They would not be able to infect the planet's population as it had planned.

But it had a contingency plan for this. The thralls would die on Shanxi, but they would make for a wonderful diplomatic incident between the humans and the Citadel races in the process. It sent another signal and began observing the reaction.

* * *

 _"This is Captain Mahari. We had an incident with one of the immigrants. She was one of the group that came from a place called Omega. I recommend locking down the facility and recalling everyone who was cleared from that location."_

"Copy that, captain," the militia colonel acknowledged. "We'll handle it."

"Orders, ma'am?" the lieutenant nearby asked.

"Quarantine. Nobody leaves this building. I'm going to coordinate with the guard force outside to recall-"

A sudden eruption of what both officers recognized as the screeching of laser rifle fire interrupted them.

 _"Enemy attack! I repeat! Attack in the holding area! These people are charging us!"_

The colonel shared a look with her subordinate before they both sprang into action. The lieutenant disappeared while the female officer hit the panic button. The previous alarm had been limited to the immigration facility itself. This one went off over the entirety of the settlement, including a sizeable area outside the restricted zone.

"Sierra India declares a class-three emergency. Repeat: Sierra India declares a class-three emergency. This is not a drill. Initiate full lockdown of the settlement. We are under attack by enemy sleeper forces. No identification. Proceed with extreme prejudice."

 **Unknown Location**

The line suddenly squawked. _"Ghost here. All units converge."_

"Monarch copies."

 _"~Team one is en route.~"_

 _"~Team two is en route.~"_

Kaidan scrambled over to Leng's position, his unease making for haste. "What is it?"

The Jaeger pointed. "Not sure what that is, but I bet that's the source of the bio readings."

The officer squinted as the Mutons arrived behind the two. "Are those…batarians?"

"Looks like it," the assassin agreed. "Don't know why those four-eyed scum suckers are impaled like that though, but it seems they might still be alive."

"I am detecting a large amount of electromagnetic signals coming from that device," one of the engineers commented. "It appears to be linked to the dormant Reaper data network."

"What the hell is it for?" Kaidan muttered.

* * *

/Enemy force localized and consolidated.

/Classification: two human, three mechanical, sixteen unknown species.

 **/SIGNAL READINESS.**

/Combat platforms report 97% combat efficiency status.

 **/ENGAGE FORCES.**

* * *

"Hey, it's moving!" Leng squinted. Sure enough, the spikes on which the batarian scum were mounted on appeared to be retracting. The scum in question were also beginning to twitch and move.

"~Your wish?~" the Muton captain asked.

"Fan out, just in case," Kaidan replied. It was a superfluous order. The teams had already moved into position.

The impaled batarians slowly began to stand up straight before they all swiveled to face them. Kaidan's blood ran cold. "They know we're here," he breathed. "They know we're here! Open fire!"

Electronic eyes observed as a veritable river of searing hot green flame crossed the open walkway, incinerating the batarian thralls before they could even begin moving toward the Alliance's forces. It was an impressive display of firepower. It was also a clear indicator of their position.

Leng's neck prickled, and he swiveled toward the side and spotted some glowing blue lights that were not present before. "Ambush!" he called.

A torrent of blue flame erupted, only to be barely repulsed by one of the Cydonian's barriers. Even so, the temperature inside rose to sweltering levels, and the two Muton soldiers roared in defiance.

Both Jaegers took the opportunity to use their augmented physiologies and jump across the way toward the new enemy force. Kaidan's eyes widened as he prepared to land on top of them. He recognized their shapes. These were geth.

 **Citadel, Council Chambers**

Tevos paced restlessly while Sparatus looked on.

"Keep doing that and you'll wear out the floor," he commented.

The asari abruptly moved over toward the couch, gripping the back ridge so hard her knuckles began to whiten. "Sorry Sparatus, it's just…with the Alliance's demands, the anti-human movement and Irissa challenging my position…I'm just under a lot of stress right now."

"Better get used to it," the turian noted dryly. "I suspect it's about to get much worse once Valern gets here."

"And you would be right about that," the salarian confirmed as he entered the room, trailing someone who both recognized as an STG agent.

"Councilors, if I may have your attention," the younger man announced. "I'm sure you're aware of our infiltration efforts in regards to the Alliance."

"More like the lack of success of those efforts," Sparatus answered. "From what I've heard, you haven't gotten anyone past their immigration department."

"That is true," the agent accepted the point. "But we have done better with signals analysis. We have managed to get a few devices close enough to Shanxi to monitor communications. We haven't gotten them through the Alliance's transportation network. Their people are extremely thorough at cleaning their ships prior to moving. But that's beside the point."

"Which is what?" Tevos asked nervously.

The agent took a deep breath. "Just recently, a few of our infiltrators managed to pass a message via the transport that ferried immigrants to the planet from the Citadel. The Alliance had a major incident in their processing facility. Apparently, multiple individuals went berserk and attacked Alliance security personnel."

Sparatus groaned. "Great, this is going to come back to us, won't it?"

"Given their past actions, it would certainly seem that way," Valern interjected.

"The Alliance placed the entire planet on lockdown," the agent continued. "They stopped all traffic and brought in assault teams to neutralize the situation. All the attackers are dead. But what is more disturbing is that many of them had some form of cybernetics."

Tevos paled. "Project Culexus…"

"Our sources reported behavior consistent with observations made by project personnel. My superiors agree that the attackers were likely some of the escaped members."

"Just when we promised to handle that mess once and for all…" Sparatus dropped his face in his hands. "So to sum it up, we now have another major diplomatic incident on our hands as a result of that damned supersoldier project."

"That's not the worst of it," Valern interrupted. "Signals analysis has revealed something truly disturbing. After the incident was handled, there was a massive signal broadcast from the Wormhole gate to the planet. There were counter signals broadcast from several major facilities, each one affiliated with the military or the militia. Immediately afterward, our observation probes in-system showed a tremendous increase in ship activity while lesser signals on the surface indicate a full scale shelter plan going into effect across the planet. The closest analogue to this behavior we can think of is a Hierarchy mobilization order."

Tevos's blood turned to ice. "They're preparing for war?"

"So it would seem."

"Goddess Athame protect us."

 **Unknown Location**

Kaidan breathed heavily as he withdrew his fist from yet another ruined geth chassis. Around him, the remains of the geth force lay strewn about.

Now that the enemy force was neutralized, he had the opportunity to examine them in detail. Unlike the geth from before, these units were much more bulky. Their weapons were integrated into the chassis, and drew power from their individual core generators. Each unit had significantly stronger kinetic barriers than before, though they were still easily overpowered by Alliance plasma weapons. He found it odd that these appeared to only be standard geth rather than the modified or specialized units from before. Then again, this had the hallmarks of them being here to aid in reconstruction or research.

"Naiad, Monarch. Enemy force neutralized."

 _"Copy, sir. We are not detecting any other life forms aboard the Reaper. Energy interference has disappeared after the core structure was shut down."_

"Is our backup here yet?"

 _"They just arrived on station, sir."_

"Tell them to hook up the tow. Let's get this thing out of here."

 _"Right away!"_

Kaidan turned to face one of the Cydonian engineers, who'd propelled themselves across the way as well and were examining the remains. "Anything interesting?"

"These units appear to have been armed with their own version of plasma weaponry," the MEC replied.

"How is that possible?"

"Without elerium, the weapons cannot be made as portable as ours. It seems the geth have compensated for that by using larger and more powerful generators within their combat chassis. It is a case of compensating for a lack of finesse by adopting a brute force solution."

"These things still die pretty easily," Kai Leng muttered as he approached.

"These are just standard troops," Kaidan warned. "If the geth improved on their grunts this much, then how much did they upgrade their heavies?"

"One additional thing of note," the engineer continued. "I am detecting Reaper technology that has been integrated into each unit. This technology is hooked up to what seems to be a powerful broad spectrum transmitter. Perhaps this has something to do with Reaper indoctrination."

Kaidan's eyes narrowed. "They're siding with the Reapers now?"

Leng snorted. "What, the fact that these things were defending a Reaper didn't give that away?"

"Captain Shepard just had a meet with some geth almost two months ago. They seemed to say that the geth were factionalized now."

"Then you shouldn't be surprised. Looks like they're playing both sides."

 _"~My team is prepared to move once more. Our injuries are minor.~"_

The engineer stood up from the pile of geth parts. "I am finished here as well."

Kaidan looked at his fellow Jaeger, who merely smirked. "Don't look at me. You're the officer, remember?"

The commander sighed. "Let's head back to the extraction point. There's nothing more for us to do here."

 _Dossier: Dr. Eva Core_

 _A brilliant mind from the post-war generation, Cerberus's second in command couples a sky-high intellect with an astonishing capacity for ruthless pragmatism. Both the director and assistant director of the Alliance's external intelligence agency have had their lives intertwined since their college days. Eva Core earned multiple degrees in political science, xenobiology, bioengineering and gene therapy._

 _She has been considered a worthy successor to her mentor, Dr. Moira Vahlen, by many of those high up within the Alliance government. Immediately after completing her doctorate, she was accepted into Alliance Intelligence where she skyrocketed up the ladder to become a senior project manager. When Dr. Vahlen returned to government service full time, she created a separate research division that would later evolve into Cerberus. Some believe that this was out of a sense of competition with her mentor._

 _She has been described as ambitious, hungry for knowledge, and very politically astute._

 **Lots of goodies and food for thought in this chapter.  
**

* * *

 **Fight scenes. One of the things I feel I tend to struggle with. I was told a long time ago by my English teachers that I got too detailed in describing things, and it tended to bore readers. Nowadays, I feel that I often don't describe things enough, and I compensate with dialogue.**

 **When I write fight scenes, they tend to be quite short. The reason for this is that I try to make things relatively realistic. Body movement, and a focus on fast rapid exchanges. In real life, a fight tends to go to whoever takes the initiative or lands the first good solid blow. The human body can be amazingly fragile, and a trained combatant doesn't need a whole lot of time to take advantage of an opening.**

 **Not to say that I am an expert in this by any means. Apart from a few school fights and the "training" from Basic or Indoc, which is a joke, I have no real experience. But others do, so I draw on their knowledge.**

 **One thing that I have found helps a lot in writing fluid and realistic fight scenes is to personally act out the motions you're trying to write. Yeah, you look like some demented moron, and you may feel pretty stupid when you "play-act" like this, but by doing it, you can somewhat place yourself in the shoes of your character. If you feel off-balance while doing it, you know your character will be. I think that this gives my fight scenes a more natural feel, and may make it easier for readers to immerse themselves in the scene.**

 **I can't say that for certain. Maybe you'll tell me your opinions in the review section.**

 **Now I could be talking out my ass here, but I'm of the opinion that grappling is more important than striking. You have more control over your opponent. You can keep them off-balance and vulnerable. And you won't injure yourself nearly as much if you use things like the floor or a table to do the damage.**

 **The hardest part, for me, is ranged combat. You might notice I tend to skimp on the details. That's because I'm no good writing chaotic crossfire scenes. They're chaotic. They're messy. For me to write them, I would have to start keeping track of where everyone in the scene is shooting, and who gets hit by what random trajectory. Ambushes are easier to write, but not by much.**


	43. Baiting

**Finally, I figured out exactly how I want the endgame of the story to go. Also, the story has reached over 300k views since June last year.**

 **I'd like to thank all my readers for giving me enough motivation and inspiration to make it this far. More on that at the end of the chapter.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Forty-one

 **The Normandy, Bridge**

"What a dump," Shepard commented, looking at the display.

"That's exactly what it is," Garrus agreed. "One old council member called it 'a garbage scow with a climate.' Personally, I think that 'climate' bit is stretching things.

"So Korlus is where we'll find this Jedore Ysanne?" Pressly asked.

"That's what Aria's intel said, and STG gave me some confirmation. Apparently, Jedore is one of the Blue Suns top lieutenants, alongside Solem Dal'Serah, Vethra Kiril and Darner Vosque. Tarak was another one before Jester killed him.

"I've heard Vosque's name, but not the other two," the captain noted.

"Publicly, Vosque is the face of the Blue Suns. Solem Dal'Serah is the supposed founder of their group, and Kiril runs a mobile prison facility called Purgatory. Truth is the STG thinks that the first two are just puppets. I've heard whispers of the name 'Vido Santigo' as someone who is even higher up in the organization. But only whispers. Nobody has ever seen this guy."

"Spooky," Captain Silva smirked. "Almost sounds like some espionage cover-up."

"What's Jedore doing here?" Pressly said, re-centering the discussion.

"So the rumor goes, she's trying to create an army of krogan using one of Saren's old research labs," the Spectre answered. "I guess that bastard had one down there somewhere. Problem is it could be almost anywhere. Scanning the planet to look for it is a crapshoot because of all the wrecked ship hulls down there."

"Not as much as you would think," EDI chimed in as her avatar appeared to the side of the display. "A genetics research lab would require a significant failsafe power source as well as adequate ventilation capabilities. A proper lab would be purpose-built, and much more difficult to locate as anyone with those resources could construct it underground. But with all the wreckage down below, what we would need to search for are large active energy signatures."

"And that would stick out like a sore thumb," Pressly continued the thought, "with all the deactivated ships lying around down there. Not to mention that according to reports, the ships are first stripped of anything useable before being abandoned, which would include repairable power sources."

"They wouldn't stick out if they're shielded," Tali interjected. "Ship hulls are designed to hide energy signatures in deep space. If I were Saren, I would bury my lab power source deep under the wreckage."

"And that would preclude easy methods of resupplying the facility," EDI reminded everyone. "The surface cannot simply be excavated like normal, due to the ship hulks. When Saren had the backing of the geth, he might have been willing to take greater security precautions. But don't forget that it is not Saren's lab any longer. It belongs to the Blue Suns. They would regard this as more of a business venture and perhaps be less inclined to place top priority on site security."

"So your plan is to observe ship traffic, see where they land, and scan around there to locate the lab," Shepard mused. "Then we land, blow through the facility and grab Okeer."

"You make it sound so easy," Garrus muttered. "The Blue Suns might have defense units to intercept us in orbit."

"Third rate rust-buckets against a brand new Alliance combat frigate? Come off it, Garrus."

 _"Don't forget the best starship pilot in the Alliance, ma'am!"_

"And there is that," the red-head added for Joker's benefit.

The turian held up both hands. "Just saying we shouldn't get too overconfident. The Blue Suns are one of the major powers in the Terminus Systems."

"Relax. This is just a smash and grab. It's what Silva and his boys train for."

"Got that right, ma'am."

* * *

The alien craft remained dormant even as its sensors detected its prey. Insectoid chittering could be heard amidst its crew as the barely sapient drones considered the next move.

They were ultimately disposable pawns, and their purpose was to provide their masters with information on the developing combat abilities of the humans as well as methods to counter them. Their attempt nearly nine months prior had been less than a resounding success. The silver lining was that their device had proven to be effective. Now, they had a new design, one that would be more efficient and difficult to detect. It remained to be seen if it presented a problem the humans could not overcome.

And that was another concern: how fast could the humans adapt? It was already troubling that the humans had superior weapons technology to every single previous cycle. And now that the masters were forcing them to invent new ways to fight, the looming question was whether it would be enough.

Their one ultimate advantage was in sheer numbers, and it was one that the masters were playing to the hilt. It appeared that the martial prowess of the humans came at the cost of diplomacy. Their efforts to drive a wedge between the humans and their possible allies were most productive. It would be this basket that the masters would hinge their efforts on.

But none of these thoughts occurred to the drones. They merely considered how long they would have to wait for reinforcements to show up. Their previous mistake was allowing the humans to escape the encounter. That mistake would not be repeated.

 **The Citadel, C-Sec Headquarters**

"Your security desk officer might want to rethink staring at my ass if he wants to keep head on straight," Tela Vasir said as she entered the conference room, "or at all."

"Can a man help it if he thinks you're easy on the eyes?" Pallin asked.

"Maybe knowing that I could kill him nineteen different ways at his desk for annoying me might keep his wandering eyes where they're supposed to be," the Spectre retorted as she sat down. "Or maybe you'd rather I just kill him outright for taking bribes from the anti-Alliance group."

"He did what?" Commander Gamar demanded, rising from his seat.

"Horin, get a grip," Tallus cautioned his fellow turian officer. "That desk jockey will still be there after the meeting for you to rip him a new one."

"I assume you have proof to back up that claim?" Sub-Executor Decian Chellick queried.

"I'll get to that in a moment," Vasir assured him. "First, I want to share what I've learned from my sources. I can definitively prove that the movement has a significant amount of financial backing from the Hegemony Remnant. I called in a favor from a forensic accountant and had him trace several fenced accounts all the way from Bra'atar to the Citadel. He also found several cargo transport runs that booking agents confirmed to have been paid for using those accounts. They have been steadily making drops to the docks right here on the Citadel."

"Do the agents or the crews of those transports have any idea what they were bringing?" Commander Cel'tara asked.

"I doubt they would," Chellick interjected. "Most of the people in the transport business know better than to ask questions. It's almost a standard practice for their clients to falsify shipping manifests several times over. Hell, we let corporations get away with doing that under the excuse of protecting company trade secrets."

"Naturally, as he says, looking at the manifests or interviewing the crew is utterly pointless," Vasir agreed. "But that's why I got some information from the dock workers. The foreman at Dock D-13 said that some of the cargo they offloaded were large heavy boxy containers that seemed to be full of computer equipment. They were told to use Electrostatic Discharge protection gear so they wouldn't damage the equipment."

Kelas Hetter, a salarian officer, frowned at that. "Why would the anti-Alliance movement be shipping around computer equipment? Unless they're thinking of trying to hack into the Alliance Embassy…"

"Beats me," the asari Spectre shrugged. "Incidentally, that guy at the desk was bribed to look the other way and not have customs do a deep scan of the shipment."

"That sounds like the cargo was more than just computer equipment," Pallin thought.

"Whatever it is, it seems the group is planning something big."

"What about Joram Talid?" Tallus wondered. "Any dirt on him?"

"Apparently, he has something of a protection racket going on," the Spectre answered. "His krogan bodyguards that he hired for 'personal safety' have been going around collecting 'donations' from people on the streets. Problem is that you can't pin it on him directly, and if you go after his muscle…"

"…we might spook him before we can build a case," Chellick finished.

"I was going to say he might get hung out to dry by his people while they dive into a hole and cover it back up, but sure, let's go with that." Vasir's casual dismissal of lawful justice made more than a few senior officers in the room bristle.

 _"Executor, sir, we have a problem,"_ a voice called over the loudspeaker.

"I'm in a meeting," the turian snapped. "What's so important that you have to break office protocol?"

Tallus could imagine the woman on the other end wilting. _"S-sir, there's a protest group forming outside the Alliance Embassy building!"_

Multiple chairs scraped against the floor as the district commanders bolted for the door. Vasir, naturally, led the way out while being closely followed by Tallus and Pallin. "Get Captain Breus on the horn and tell him his boys need to head over to the embassy right away and get control of the situation! I don't want this to turn into a gun battle with the Alliance Marines!"

In spite of himself, Gamar snorted. "From what I've seen, it would be more of a massacre. The humans aren't known for holding anything back."

 **Korlus, Blue Suns landing zone**

Silva swiped the blood off his non-regulation kukri knife before replacing it back in the sheath. His earpiece crackled as he turned to face his command sergeant. _"Sentries eliminated. LZ is secure."_

 _"Arkbird copies LZ is clear. Onsite in twenty,"_ Captain Foulke announced.

"Bloody amateurs," the ranking NCO growled. "I think I'm actually getting worse killing these little shits."

"You always have a way of brightening up my day, Gunny," the captain laughed as he consulted his tactical display. "EDI, your sensors giving you any numbers on the opposition?"

"I cannot give you any forecast more accurate than 'significant resistance,' Captain," the MEC gynoid replied. "My sensors are showing a very large concentration of biological readings. Considering that this is supposedly a laboratory focused on cloning krogan, it would be prudent to assume that the Blue Suns forces will be augmented with cloned warriors."

 _"I'd be careful about using that word,"_ Garrus called over the line. _"Even if they have a bunch of oversized lizards to back them up, they're not going to be anywhere near as good as properly trained soldiers."_

"While their quality may be lacking, quantity has a quality of its own," EDI retorted.

 _"Enough you two,"_ Shepard ordered as the Arkbird swept into view above the landing area. _"Save it for the enemy. And remember that we need the krogan scientist alive. So watch your fire."_

The ship landed and opened the ramp to allow its passengers to exit before climbing back up to altitude. _"Ma'am, the structures in the area won't give me any room to maneuver if I try to cover you from the sky. You're on your own until you can find another LZ."_

"Acknowledged," the red-head answered. "Find cover close by and hold position for a hot extraction. Normandy, set up a targeting solution for the surface just in case."

"Hope we don't need to use that," the turian commented, looking dubiously at the walls of starship hull plating towering over them. "One bad shot will bring the whole place down on us."

"That's the plan after we make the grab. Let's move!"

"Form up!" Silva roared.

Tali glanced around nervously until EDI gestured at her to fall in next to her MEC avatar.

"Alright people, we all know the objective. Everyone who jumped down here is scouting ahead. The rest of you move with the Captain! Don't fire unless you're fired upon! No sense letting them know we're coming."

At that moment, one of the corpses radios began squawking. _"Green patrol, you haven't checked in! What's your status?"_

Garrus looked at Shepard for a moment, and then walked over and synced his omnitool with the radio. "Eh, we're fine," he responded with a passable imitation of a drunk man's voice. "Nothing ever happens here anyway."

 _"I'll take that under advisement,_ " came the acid response. _"Wake the fuck up and get back to your patrol! You're not being paid to fuck around and drink booze!"_

The line clicked off before the Spectre could even begin to think of a response. "Someone's got a temper," he chuckled.

"Maybe she's having a bad day," Shepard wondered.

"It's about to get a lot worse."

* * *

The ancient krogan grumbled to himself, wondering what lunacy had caused him to agree to work with this loud and incompetent female mercenary. There was no end to the complaints that poured from her lips even as he faithfully held up his end of the bargain by giving her all the failures of his experiments. Failures as krogan though they were, they were still krogan, perfectly viable as warriors if only they had competent leadership.

Admittedly, he hadn't been helping his case with the number of rejects. Other scientists would have considered his standards unreasonably high. But he could not accept compromise. To revitalize the krogan race, he needed to achieve perfection. Absolute and utter perfection. And so he was forced to discard so many children that others would have deemed adequate.

He turned his eyes to the primary tank in his lab. This one, he had high hopes for. It was the result of all his efforts to painstakingly eliminate genetic weakness in krogan DNA, and this one had no significant flaws that could have been introduced by the accelerated growth process. By his estimation, he would be able to make a final determination within the next few days. Perhaps this juvenile would-

Battle-worn senses alerted him to a distant and familiar noise. Gunfire. It was quite a ways away, but it was different from the gunfire he'd usually heard around the training grounds.

 _"I don't know who you are, but you made a mistake coming to Blue Suns territory!"_ And there was the voice of the incompetent. He snorted and returned his attention to his computer terminal. Whatever was happening likely wasn't his problem. While the incompetent (he couldn't even be bothered to remember her name) might lack the ability to control her men, the Blue Suns mercenaries stationed here were quite capable of handling things on their own.

He looked through experiment records again, keeping himself up to date on everything running in his lab while the sounds of combat echoed on the background. But after a while, he looked up with a nagging feeling of unease. The average interloper should have been disposed of by now as a result of the combined efforts of the mercenaries and his failed children. Instead, the intruders appeared to be tearing through them in an unstoppable advance, especially if the incompetent's continued ranting over the loudspeakers was any indication.

 _"The Archangel?! You're telling me that the fucking Archangel is here?! Damn it! That means he brought the Alliance with him!"_

Okeer jolted in shock. The Alliance? What reason would the humans have to…ah, Saren's lab. They would certainly be out to destroy anything left behind by that traitorous Spectre. And it was just his luck to be sitting inside of their target.

Wait. He paused in thought after entering a command to back up everything on his terminal. If the Alliance was merely here to destroy the lab, they could have simply fired from orbit. The humans certainly had the backbone to do that. But if they sent troops down to the surface, they were looking for something or someone.

No one knew about his research other than the incompetent and her men. Either they were here for her, a lieutenant of the Blue Suns, or they were coming for him.

He had no time to ponder the reasons why when the door exploded. A reflexive barrier protected him and his terminal, sparing himself the loss of his files. From the smoke-filled doorway, several armored shapes poured into the room, rifles trained on him. He raised his hands in a placating gesture.

"I assume you are here for me?" he asked.

The lead figure tapped his helmet, evidently communicating with his superiors. Then he nodded and switched to his helmet speakers.

"Warlord Okeer, we were sent to find you. We'll need you to come with us right away."

Okeer felt somewhat torn. To be taken away just before the fruits of his research had ripened was…painful to say the least. On the other hand, he could start again somewhere else. And he was not about to die of old age anytime soon. He swallowed before nodding. "Let me grab my files first."

He moved to a corner of the room and grabbed a large case with wires sticking out of it. After disconnecting them, he moved back over toward the soldiers, pausing to gently caress the tank with the sleeping krogan. "You will be missed, but your brothers will know of you, little grunt."

 **The Olympus, Secure Communications**

For the first time in recent memory, Admiral Hackett saw that General Summers was not the angriest person in the conference. Even across millions of light-years, everyone could feel the seething anger from the Alliance Chairman.

 _"I hope someone has an explanation for this attack on our soil,"_ the man said, his calm voice completely at odds with his emotions.

 _"It would seem that some escapees from the Citadel's pet project attempted to slip their way past our immigration facility,"_ Director Moore answered, unruffled by the man's rage, _"and once discovered, they attacked our men as one wave. Thanks to the lockdown procedures, casualties were at a minimum, though nineteen immigrants died in the firefight. Seven militia personnel were wounded."_

 _"Project Culexus again,"_ Harper noted. _"The Citadel's incompetence is once again costing us."_

 _"They promised to put more effort into cleaning up their mess,"_ Udina reminded everyone.

 _"Seems like an awfully hollow promise at the moment,"_ Summers retorted.

"I noticed we're on Condition Two," the admiral interrupted. "How are we explaining this to the people?"

 _"So far, notices have only gone out to Shanxi, Eden Prime and Elysium,"_ Moore answered. _"Everywhere else is on Condition Three, which is justified by our pre-mobilization buildup. I've told the press that what happened at the facility was an act of terrorism by anti-human sleeper agents from Citadel Space. That should hold up for the time being, and give the Citadel some room to maneuver. I don't think we want to force them to publicly admit the existence of their runaway project just yet."_

 _"What were the Reapers hoping to gain from this?_ " the Chairman wondered.

 _"Based on remote autopsy, I think that these units were meant to infiltrate Shanxi and try to spread their influence via indoctrination through the immigrated populace,"_ Harper mused. _"Worst case scenario, they somehow indoctrinate militia personnel, and those people carry the infection to our other territories. Failing that, they could have forced us to use extreme measures to try and cleanse the planet of the threat of indoctrination, which would have an even more deleterious effect on our diplomatic relations."_

"Sneaky," Hackett growled. "If that's the case, we need to alert all the planetary militias to be on the lookout for any trace of indoctrination."

 _"I would advise against that,"_ Moore disagreed, _"given how the militia are tied to their home planets. The last thing we need is panic and suspicion spreading to the people over infiltrators that may or may not be present."_

 _"So we just leave them all in the dark?"_ Summers demanded.

 _"It would be better if my people go around conducting low-profile investigations. We're Intelligence. We're supposed to be everywhere. My people know to keep their mouths shut."_

 _"I can dispatch some people to the Citadel to conduct covert pre-screening of the immigrants coming over,"_ Harper offered.

 _"All of you come up with a plan,"_ the Chairman ordered. _"I want to hear a proposal by this time tomorrow. This does not happen again, understood?"_

 **The Normandy, Bridge**

"So that Urdnot whelp Wrex sent you to find me?" Okeer laughed. "I'm surprised he didn't tell you to shoot me."

"Considering some of the things you've done, so am I," Garrus said. "Selling your own people to the Collectors?"

"I would see my people become strong again," the old warrior countered. "The Genophage made it so that every single mewling weakling is treasured. Before that, only the strongest of our kind survived."

"You're one of the reasons people still want you under the Genophage," the turian retorted. "You keep trying to rebuild the krogan as an army that can relive the Krogan Rebellion. You've been hurting your own race because of that."

"I was there when your people used it on us, turian. Rather than take us on directly, you resorted to tricks. I know that the Salarians never wanted to use the Genophage, but your people forced them to hand it over. That kind of cowardice is why we look down on you, even if you won that war."

"You just want to fight the last war. Wrex wants something completely different." Garrus glared at the scientist. "I'm really beginning to wonder whether you're worth it to him."

"We getting along over here?" Shepard asked. "Because if you're going to duke it out, take it downstairs."

"And you think the Genophage is bad? Ask the Batarians how the Alliance fights," the Spectre continued, ignoring the captain. "They infected Khar'shan with nanites and wiped out everyone on the planet. You call it cowardice, everyone else calls it 'fighting smart.' If you krogan learned to control yourselves, you might have made it a lot harder for us during the war."

"You would have us be 'civilized,'" Okeer argued. "That would make my race weak. The only thing we could ever count on was our martial strength. That's all you ever wanted from us when you uplifted us. We were just a hammer to beat the Rachni into submission. And you repaid my kind by destroying our way of life."

* * *

The alien craft detached from the device it had towed closer to the planet and its prey. The reinforcements were nearly here. Now was the time to strike.

The new device began to power up and the computerized control system locked onto its target. A near invisible ray of dark energy stabbed out into the void and surrounded the human spacecraft, still in orbit after firing on the planet.

Meanwhile, the alien ship rapidly closed in from the rear.

* * *

 _"Unknown contacts! One large Mass Effect signature and large ship approaching at high speed!"_

The ship jolted as Joker began evasive maneuvers.

"Captain, the mobile contact has the same configuration as the unknown that attacked the previous Normandy," EDI announced.

"An ambush?!"

"It would appear so."

"They were waiting for us," Garrus breathed. "How did they know where we were?"

"No time for that," Shepard snapped. "Battlestations! Deploy the drones!"

 _"Two more enemy contacts from in front! Same size as that other one!"_

Shepard froze. "Three enemy cruisers…"

* * *

The alien craft all closed to within firing distance and locked onto the human frigate. Then three yellowish-white lances converged on the ship.

The alien intelligence looked on through the sensors of its thralls. Time to see if the humans could adapt to this.

 **So yeah, a three-on-one ambush. Wonder how the Normandy will get out of this one.**

 **Can anyone guess how the Collectors knew where to find them?**

* * *

 **Since I finally know how I want this all to end, I decided to celebrate by starting a new Naruto story. Hopefully, I can finish that one as well. It's called "No Strings Attached," and you can find it on my profile if you want to check it out.**

 **Now for some shameless review baiting. I am holding a contest for everyone. The next five chapters I put out, I will pick one reviewer to receive a spoiler of their choice. What I am looking for is the most helpful and constructive review for each week. I want to hear what you like about my story, writing, or that specific chapter, and why. I also what to hear what you don't like or think can be improved on, and how.**

 **A lot of authors and reviewers seem to miss that aspect of the review system. Reviews are your opportunity to tell us authors how we can better ourselves at our craft. To be fair, some authors lash out at anyone who even remotely criticizes them. I was somewhat guilty of doing that a few years back. That kind of thing tends to be why some people don't even bother with constructive reviews.**

 **But I genuinely want to do better. I have two original story ideas that are currently languishing because I do not feel I can write them well enough to do them justice. That's why I need your help.**

 **And as a reward, you have the following choice of spoilers:**

 **1) The fates (read: deaths) of any three of your favorite characters.**

 **2) EXALT's Third Contact Project.**

 **3) Ethereal story background.**

 **4) Reaper strategy.**

 **5) The Geth endgame.  
**

 **Each spoiler will go to a different person. If you win one time, you are disqualified from winning another spoiler. This way, no one person will know everything.**

 **Quintain Apprentice of Alduin, I am sorry to say that you are disqualified from this contest because you already have one of these spoilers.**

 **Everyone else, include which spoiler you would like with your reviews.**


	44. Trapping

**This one is shorter than usual, and it was quite a bit harder to write. I now have to start tying things off for the ME2 ending.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Forty-two

 **Gorus**

The batarian landlord flattened himself against the wall as a turian, a salarian and an asari pushed past into the apartment.

The lead officer quickly swept the room. From all appearances, the apartment was completely ordinary. The bed was unmade and the curtains of the balcony pulled away to allow the morning sunlight to reflect off the dresser mirror. There was a suitcase of clothing thrown open with a set of sleepwear draped over an armchair.

"Clear!" the salarian barked.

"Clear," the other two acknowledged. "Suspect isn't here," the asari stated the obvious as she holstered her pistol and turned to the landlord.

"I don't keep track of tenants," the man said defensively. "They ask for a room, I give them one, they pay for it, and that's all. I'm not about to stick my nose in their business."

"I'm sure that makes you popular with the dregs of society," the salarian commented as he walked over to the balcony to stare at the surrounding area.

"What was it that guy from the STG said?" the turian asked, causing the landlord to pale.

"This guy is a former Hegemony sniper," the asari recalled. "Military, high ranking former regime personnel."

"A sniper," the salarian repeated, suddenly overcome with foreboding. He scanned the skyline.

"Sounds like merc material," the turian muttered. "But why here? This planet is one of the poorest in the Terminus."

"Perfect place to lie low after a job," the asari thought.

"But if he's lying low, he's not doing that great a job," the salarian noted, still unable to shake his feeling. "Not if the STG is onto him."

"Not to sound speciesist, but aren't they your people?" the asari pointed out.

"I'm a cop, not a spy," the senior officer retorted. "I prefer the law over back-shooting criminals."

"You know, if this guy is big enough to make the STG put him on their radar, maybe he already knows," the turian mused. "What if he's watching the apartment right now?"

Across the way, there was a loud crackling sound. The three police officers reached for their sidearms as the salarian eyeballed the source of the sound.

"What's that?!" the turian demanded while the landlord began slowly shying away from the apartment door.

"It's a window pane," the salarian followed the shards of material as they fell to the street.

"Anything come out?" the asari peered over the dresser she was using as a form of cover.

The senior cop shifted his view to the window in question. There was no one in it. But oddly enough, he could see through the building. And through a second one. And off in the distance, there was a rooftop almost perfectly centered in that tiny viewing window. His blood turned to ice. _Sniper, STG, those broken windows…_

"Get clear!" he bellowed as he turned to bolt for the doorway. It was already far too late.

A thin stream of blue formed in the air connecting the distant rooftop with that apartment building. The strand terminated on the right foot bedpost, right in the midst of the three police officers. From the distance, a wave of compressed air traveled down the strand, Air outside the strand rushed in to fill the gap before being propelled in the same direction. The air became more and more compressed until it ceased to be gas, transformed into a liquid, and then a semi-solid mass with a density rapidly approaching that of steel. The blue strand abruptly disappeared, leaving behind a displacement of air and an incredibly dense mass pressed firmly against a now semi-deformed metal post.

An incredibly dense mass that lacked any sort of pressure to maintain said density. The particles still retained their collective kinetic energy, or temperature. The absurdly high temperature and pressure forced that mass to expand again in order to equalize with the far lower pressure and density of the surrounding gasses. The rapid movement of air produced a powerful omnidirectional concussive wave that pulverized the bed and smeared the three officers around the room. The landlord was blown halfway down the hall of his building as the shockwave fragmented the wall he'd pressed himself against. He would be the only lucky survivor.

* * *

Three eyelids opened as the glow from the weapon died away. He took one final glance through the scope before rolling out of the sightline and beginning the process of disassembling the weapon. He felt only the slightest remorse.

They had been cops. They had been tools. Used by the man who had told them about him. They were the bird-dogs sent to flush the game.

He was no fool. If the pursuer was who he thought it was, this was the beginning of a long and exciting chase. He and his opponent would be both hunter and hunted. It would be glorious, a fitting end one way or another for a man like himself. Two old soldiers of the last war in a dance to the death.

* * *

The doctor in him grieved for the senseless deaths of the three young individuals several floors below. The agent, his more ruthless side, took careful note of the direction and apparent origin of the beam.

He had been in that apartment two days ago. He had found the various acoustic devices that told him the room was merely bait. The man was waiting for him.

They had talked long before events had come to this point. They had both reminisced on the rare times each had crossed the other's path. They had a mutual respect for each other's lethality and fieldcraft. The assassin betrayed by his own government, and the stubborn old scientist with too many secrets. If not for his condition, perhaps they could have become colleagues.

But the time for sentimentality was long past. He needed to focus on the task at hand.

While his position was too far away to directly see the firing point, it took little stretch of imagination to conclude that the unusual weapon was line-of-sight. The beam had lasted quite long, all things considered. It was clearly derived from Element Zero. The first whispers of a theory of operation began forming in his mind. He would refine it once he went down to observe the damage, but it appeared that his initial suspicions about the weapon were confirmed.

The man would be on the move now. He had a starting point, and a trail. In all his years, he'd learned much of the art of tracking a suspect. Many had fallen to him before. But this man was every inch his equal. He would know how to throw off most pursuers. He could easily turn the chase around.

It would be a challenge like no other, but if anyone could manage it, it was him. Dr. Mordin Solus sniffed the air one last time, savoring a forgotten feeling: the thrill of the hunt. And then he went to work.

 **The Normandy, Bridge**

The ship jolted violently, and the lights dimmed throughout. _"Shields are at 20%!"_ Joker yelped. _"We can't take another salvo like that!"_

"Buy us some time!" Pressly barked. "Wait until we see another power build-up in the enemy ships, and then get us some distance!"

"First, launch the Firebirds!" Shepard snapped as she bolted for the launch bay. "Then we all jump behind one target each and take out their engines! Immobilize them, and we can make sure they won't pull this again!"

Pressly nodded as he watched his commander and the Spectre disappear. Not only would that plan preempt another ambush from the enemy, it would ensure that the enemy wouldn't entrap their boarding parties by leaving with them still aboard.

"Silva, marching orders! Man both dropships, and have a detachment stay on the Normandy!"

 _"Yes ma'am!"_

With her ad-hoc battle plan underway, the red-head took a moment to review it. Disable the engines, send out boarding parties to each ship, and plant charges to disable the cores without obliterating everything. Afterwards, the Alliance would be very interested in picking through the wreckage.

"Ma'am, looks like I'm going with you," the gunnery sergeant said as he clambered aboard the dropship with a ten-man squad behind him."

Shepard turned to the turian. "Garrus, get on the other dropship! We'll board and destroy the ship cores to kill their life support, and have someone come clean up later."

The Spectre turned and raced to the other craft without a word. Meanwhile, klaxons sounded from the flight deck below as the bay depressurized and the Firebirds flew out.

 _"Both ships ready to release in one minute!"_ Captain Foulke called.

 _"Everybody strap in!"_ Colonel Nagase ordered.

No sooner had the last of the men buckled in then the ship shuddered once more.

 _"Firing now!"_ Joker yelled. _"How do you like that you sunzabitches?!"_

 _"Enemy craft propulsion systems are disabled,"_ EDI reported. _"Warning: weapon systems still operational. Enemy craft have each deployed small fliers."_

 _"All hands on deck, prepare for launch!"_ the flight deck officer screamed.

Everyone was pressed against their restraints as the two dropships leapt forward. Five minutes later, the gunnery sergeant was swearing up a blue streak as inertial forces messed with his inner ear.

 _"Damn if they aren't agile little bastards,"_ Pixy snarled. _"Get the fuck over here you-hah! Got another one!"_

 _"Captain, on your six!"_ Nagase shrieked.

From his position at the tactical display, Pressly and the other battle staff were treated to the sight of Pixy's icon doing a 180 and moving backwards as the enemy contacts trailing him winked out almost instantly.

 _"Man, I forgot what a thrill space combat was!"_

 _"Show-off!"_ Joker snorted as he cleared off enemy drones from the Firebirds. _"Try doing that with a full-sized ship like I did, then you can talk."_

"When you're done with the chit-chat, let's get our men on those ships," Pressly reminded everyone.

Garrus swallowed, fighting the familiar sense of nausea from the chaotic and buffeted ride as the pilot manhandled her craft into position.

 _"I'll have to do a flyby!"_ Nagase called. _"You'll have to blast your way in once you land on the hull!"_

 _"Same here,"_ Foulke added. _"You people get ready to bail!"_

 _"Warning: the enemy device has engaged thrusters and is approaching the battle area rapidly,"_ EDI announced. _"Scans show Element Zero core of the device is in the process of overloading."_

On three different craft, many faces turned sheet-white with horror.

"Abort!" Shepard screamed. "Get us clear!"

 _"The Normandy's drive is still recharging. We don't have time to-"_

 _"Don't give me that,"_ Joker snapped. _"Hang on!"_

Pressly desperately grabbed at the railing of the bridge to keep himself upright as the ship slewed around.

 _"Calculating firing solution. I advise all units seek shelter behind the enemy cruisers."_

The dropships immediately complied, both pilots hoping against all odds that EDI was right on this call.

 _"Rerouting power to forward shields…firing solution locked! Fusion lance away!"_

The impact-fused nuclear warhead smashed into the massive object at relativistic speed, utterly ignoring its kinetic barriers and shattering the core containment structure. With the loss of structural integrity, the energy build-up in the core ceased, and the mass of Element Zero was free to discharge itself. At the same time, the warhead exploded just as it encountered the core material, blasting it apart as a wave of dark energy erupted from the core. In the short time that the hull of the device maintained what was left of its integrity, the reflectors at the core focused the energy into a jet that spewed back down the firing trajectory and hammered the Normandy's forward shields. The shields shorted out, but not before absorbing enough energy to cause the nose to deflect. The jet grazed the right side of the forward section, stripping off panels of heavy armor and rattling the frigate very hard before the device was completely disintegrated.

Pressly picked himself off the floor and growled in annoyance at the bloody smear on his palm as he rubbed his face. "Damage report!"

 _"Shield systems are down due to engagement of the safeties. I recommend a full system check."_

"Engineering, get on it!"

 _"We suffered some structural damage on the right side, but no hull breaches."_

"I think that was their last card to play," Shepard called. "Now let's get the boarding parties going and disable these ships for good!"

 **Unknown location**

Kai Leng smirked as he stared across the bay from the boarding ramp of his ship. "Well this is a surprise. What does Dr. Eva Core, head scientist of Cerberus, want with me?"

"I'm here to make you a deal," the doctor replied nervously.

The assassin cocked his head. "I thought I already had one. Are we renegotiating it?" he asked while flicking his blade hilt with his thumb.

Core swallowed. The meaning of the gesture was not lost on her. "This is a different deal than the one you have with Director Harper."

Leng raised an eyebrow. "So you're not here on the directors orders, are you?" He chuckled darkly. "I knew there was something off about you. I could tell from the day we met that you and the director have different goals."

Core's blood turned ice cold. "Did you tell anyone?" she asked, wondering how compromised she was.

Leng snorted. "Of course not. Since when do I actually give a shit about the Alliance? I could care less if you and the director killed each other. It's no skin off my nose."

The doctor exhaled with enormous relief. "I…the organization I really work for, we could use someone of your abilities. I can offer you more freedom in exchange for working with us."

The man laughed as he walked up to her, enjoying the now visible terror in her eyes as he approached. "Doc, there's only one thing I want right now," he whispered, "and I doubt you can give it to me."

"Tell me what it is," she said. "M-maybe we can come to an arrangement."

The assassin smiled. "I'm tired of killing weaklings. There's no challenge at all. What I want is a fight with Shepard. On my terms. Promise me that, and we have a deal."

"I can't give you that right now, but it's not out of the question later on," the woman replied, grateful that the request wasn't too extreme.

"I'll hold you to that."

 **Tuchanka, Urdnot Enclave**

"So you need me after all," Okeer noted triumphantly.

"Don't test me," Wrex snarled. "Urdnot hasn't forgotten your crimes, Okeer."

"And I haven't forgotten those of your father, though you saved me the trouble of killing him myself."

"This might not end well," Garrus muttered to nods of assent from Shepard and Tali.

The krogan chieftain scowled. "That kind of thinking is why our race is where it is right now. You and my father were too focused on fighting to think about rebuilding. We don't need warriors right now! We need builders and great minds!"

Okeer's smile vanished to be replaced by a disgusted expression. "So you've gone soft, haven't you? How disgraceful."

"What is disgraceful is how stupid our people have been, and that includes you!" Wrex exploded. "When we realized what the Salarians did to us, how did we 'fight back?' We didn't! Our people gave up and went off to die 'gloriously!' Instead of trying to overcome the Genophage, our race is slowly committing suicide! THAT is disgraceful!"

"And what do you think I have been trying to do over these centuries?" Okeer growled. "My research has been dedicated to finding a way to render the Genophage utterly irrelevant. Let the Salarians keep using their weapons. They would only make us stronger!"

"And you really think they'd just keep using it once it's clear it wouldn't work anymore?" Wrex demanded. "They would just go and do something more extreme. Worst case scenario, they finish off what our pups have been doing for a thousand years and our race dies out! We've given the galaxy plenty of reasons to want to keep us down! If fighting is all we're good for, then why would they ever let us climb back up?"

"Which is why I want our warriors to be strong enough to take them on and give us a chance to get back up," the scientist explained.

"No, you've been trying to take us back to the past," the chieftain snapped. "The only reason we're getting help from the humans is because I promised that our race would focus on rebuilding. They are strong enough to stand up to everyone else while we learn to do something other than fight or kill each other. What we need isn't krogan strength. We need krogan minds. We need to not only be strong, but be smart. If we had our own scientists and engineers, maybe we wouldn't need to keep using Citadel or Alliance handouts to keep ourselves going. And maybe we could have fought back the Genophage on our own! Ever think of that?"

Okeer stopped short, caught off guard by the argument. "I never really thought of it that way," the old warrior admitted.

"You never tried," Wrex said flatly. "But I guess it's a good thing this Urdnot whelp is here to set you straight. If it were up to me, you'd be dead. But as the humans say, beggars can't be choosers."

The scientist smiled again. "You've grown quite a bit from the time that you were a whelp, Wrex. I'll play along for now, but when the galaxy comes after us again and our warriors remain too weak, I'll remember this day."

"You and me both," the former mercenary muttered as the scientist moved off with two Urdnot clan members in tow.

"I thought this might end in a fistfight," Shepard commented.

"Well the fact that it didn't tells me maybe Okeer came up with the same idea a long time ago, but just didn't think it was possible," Wrex mused. "He might have wanted to wipe out everyone except his group and then bring us his own way. Who knows? It doesn't matter now."

"Like I said before, you better keep a tight leash on him," Garrus warned. "One galactic war with the krogan was enough."

"I told you I'm not stupid," the krogan said as he began walking off. "If he tries anything else, I'll kill him myself."

Shepard shrugged. "Well, now that this errand is over, what say we head back to the ship? There's still two escaped cyborgs on the loose."

"That reminds me, I need to check in with Mordin," Garrus muttered looking at his omni-tool. "Huh, message from Kal'Reegar."

"What? What does it say?!" Tali asked.

Garrus opened the message, and his expression soured. "Tali, the Migrant Fleet wants you back. Something happened to your father, and…and they're accusing you of treason."

"What?!" Tali shrieked. "They're…but I haven't…"

"We don't know what's going on, but we'll find out when we get there," Shepard cautioned.

"Damn right we will…" Garrus growled. "Tali hasn't done anything! This is bullshit!"

"Is there a location?"

"It's encrypted. Tali, can you get them for us?"

 _Codex: Saser Rifle_

 _Initially developed for XCON, and later rolled into the Cerberus division, this rifle is the quintessential assassin's weapon. It delivers a concussive impulse directly to a target that is capable of scrambling brain tissue and causing cardiovascular damage. The weapon is effective to a range of approximately 800 meters under standard atmospheric conditions. It leaves no trace, and produces no firing signature. However, the weapon's effectiveness is almost completely mitigated by armor. Anything other than a direct hit to living tissue is ineffective. This limits use of the weapon to living targets. Additionally, the weapon loses effectiveness in areas of low or no atmosphere._

 _The weapon can be modulated for low power shots that merely cause severe pain and mild bruising on impact. This nonlethal capacity makes it highly prized among militia and Intelligence operatives for the purposes of avoiding collateral damage and/or capturing and subduing a target rather than killing them outright. Cerberus covert operation teams are also known to employ this weapon when secrecy is a must._

 _Codex: Concussion Rifle_

 _In contrast to the human-designed Saser Rifle, the Reaper-designed Concussion Rifle trades precision and concealment for raw power._

 _This weapon forms a "tunnel" of Dark Energy that acts upon the air caught inside. It is focused in a long and narrow arc, pushing the air and compressing it toward the impact point. More air rushes in to the vacuum and is compressed with it. The end result is a massive build-up of air pressure at the impact point held together only by the beam from the weapon._

 _When the "tunnel" is cut off, the Dark Energy keeping the air compressed is lost, and the air expands violently in an attempt to equalize pressure, creating an explosive effect that obliterates everything immediately surrounding the target._

 _The weapon's major downsides are its firing trail, recharge time, and ineffectiveness in areas of thin or no atmosphere._

 **Dr. Core makes a new play. What is her game plan?**

 **I was hoping to get more review and constructive feedback, but maybe it's just slow to ramp up. In any case, Finwee Lord of Long Winds gets the first one. Check your PM inbox for the spoiler.**

 **Everyone else, this is what is still available:  
**

 **1) The fates (read: deaths) of any three of your favorite characters.**

 **2) EXALT's Third Contact Project.**

 **3) Reaper strategy.**

 **4) The Geth endgame.**

 **Once again, I am looking for constructive feedback. What you like about my story and why. What you think could be improved, and maybe some suggestions for how. The person who gives the most helpful review gets the next spoiler.  
**


	45. Trial and Tribulation

**This chapter took a bit to write, mainly because I had to figure out how to work Tygan and Shen into their bit.**

 **Thyrann, I don't know if you're interested in my little contest, but I found your review to be the most helpful this time around. Sadly, it seems you've disabled Private Messaging, and you didn't pick a choice of spoiler. Please tell me if you would like one, and if so, which one.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Forty-three

 **The Citadel, Alliance Embassy**

Marine Second Lieutenant Kyle Shepard felt nervous as he approached the office of his new commander. His mother had pulled a few strings to land him this assignment so that he might have a chance of seeing his sister, but they had just barely passed each other. In fact, he'd arrived almost two days after the Normandy had departed again.

And of course, he'd had a rather eventful past few days. The day he'd arrived, their transport had been ordered to wait in the docks nearly six hours while a situation at the Embassy was being handled, and now he'd finally been able to get his housing arrangements straightened out. Now, he was going to see the commander and find out where he'd be assigned as the fucking new guy.

"-due respect, sir, how am I supposed to make sure everyone here is safe if people are hiding information from me?"

"Major, as I said before, you were kept in the dark for a reason. This is no time to continue fretting over past decisions."

"It's a decision that was made without my knowledge over a security issue! The welfare of everyone in this compound is my responsibility!"

"And the image of the Alliance in the eyes of the local populace here is mine. Knowing how our military forces are trained, I deemed it the lesser of two evils to keep you in the dark in order to prevent a major incident that could have started over just one of your men developing a twitchy trigger finger."

"My men are better trained than that!"

"Accidents happen. But here, it wouldn't be considered an accident. I still stand by my decision. In any case, you are now aware of the new threat. I trust you will adjust accordingly. Good day, Major."

Kyle flattened himself against the wall as the door opened and Ambassador Donnel Udina stepped out of the room. With only a brief nod of acknowledgement to both himself and the master gunnery sergeant in the room, the civilian vanished down the hall. Summoning his courage, Kyle stepped into the doorway.

"Sir, Second Lieutenant Shepard reports as ordered!"

"At ease, Lieutenant," a tired-looking Major Bailey waved to a chair in front of his desk. "How much of that did you hear?"

"Sir, I got here just as the ambassador opened the door."

"Uh-huh," the man grunted dubiously. "Okay, first things first: cut the 'sir,' shit. Just call me Major. Second, welcome to the Citadel, where there are thirteen million possible hostiles against just our garrison of three-hundred marines."

"Sounds like fun," Kyle managed with a smile.

"Yeah just you wait, lieutenant. It gets even better. No thanks to his majesty the ambassador, we recently got word of a very unfriendly movement of locals who hate humans in general, and everyone in the Embassy in particular. In case you were wondering, they're the ones responsible for your six-hour holdup at the docks the other day."

"What did they do, sir?" Kyle winced internally as Bailey eyeballed him for his slip of the tongue.

"They decided to have themselves a big mass protest right outside the gates and announce their existence to us. We only found out what the hell was going on when C-Sec –that's the Citadel police force –showed up to pull them back off the gates. Apparently, the Council told the ambassador about them, and he decided not to warn us because he was worried we'd get trigger-happy. Well, that and the fact that he wanted to score some political points."

"It's not quite as simple as that, Major," a new voice chimed in. Kyle shot to his feet as Captain Anderson entered the room. "As you were, as you were."

"Do tell, sir," Bailey replied acidly. "I'm dying of suspense."

"You already know this by now. You have your job, and the ambassador has his."

"Sir, my job is to ensure the safety and security of everyone in this embassy. Anyone gets hurt, scratched, or even breathed on by the enemy, it's my ass. We are deep in potentially hostile territory, surrounded on all sides, and outnumbered more than forty thousand to one. The odds are long enough."

"Udina has the same concerns you do, Bailey," Anderson pointed out. "But he has even less to work with. That being said, his job is to avoid giving those thirteen million potential hostiles outside this compound a reason to move against us. And diplomats are never comfortable with us military types. They always think we're going to fly off the handle and make their job harder. That's why the ambassador didn't tell you. In any case, I expect you to move on and come up with a plan of attack for this new threat."

Bailey sighed. "Well, I have to get Lieutenant Shepard situated first."

"Then get to it," the captain ordered before taking his leave.

Bailey exhaled through his nose. "Sergeant Finn!"

Master Gunnery Sergeant Sean Finn poked his head through the door. "Sahr?"

"We've both seen Lieutenant Shepard's records. Where do you think he can do the most good?"

The old sergeant scratched his chin. "Well I think the pricks in Second Platoon can teach him right, fix those bad habits he picked up from those buggers at Titan."

Kyle eyed the sergeant before looking back at Bailey, who chuckled. "Sergeant Finn has a few strong opinions regarding the Titan Academy curriculum. I've never heard him say anything kind about them."

"If you lived through what I have, you wouldn't have anything nice to say about those wankers either. I was in the war," Finn explained.

"You're that old?" Kyle asked in surprise.

"What? You think General Summers is the only old bastard too stubborn to call it quits? The day I'm out is the day I die."

"Don't let his age fool you, Shepard," Bailey warned. "Sergeant Finn is the head combat instructor of the garrison. I've watched him take apart every single marine in hand-to-hand, and he's taken money off everyone on the range."

"Then I guess I'll be learning from the best," Kyle noted.

 **Hagalaz**

A loud bang echoed down the hall as her mother's commandos cautiously escorted her forward, to the Broker's quarters. Behind the far door, a small puddle of dark liquid was forming/.

Liara swallowed nervously as her entourage approached, then she was firmly pushed to the side as the commandos took positions around the door. One nodded, and the door flew open as everyone pointed their weapons through it.

Miranda stood against the wall, casually wiping a bloody smear off her palm with slight annoyance. On the other side of the room lay several crumpled shapes that Liara immediately recognized as Collectors. And just to the side of the door was a much larger shape that was bleeding profusely.

"About time you got here," the Alliance agent commented.

The asari all looked around. "This is cleaner than I thought it would be," one commando muttered.

Miranda snorted. "Please, I'm the delicate work type. I don't leave big messes behind."

"Then what do you call that?" the commando indicated the bleeding hulk next to the door.

"Ah, introductions," Miranda continued briskly. "Meet the Shadow Broker, or what used to be the broker. Don't know his species, but that thing was bigger than a krogan. Of course, his size didn't help him at all."

"That's a Yahg," Liara explained automatically. "A very aggressive species that the salarians came across a while back. They ate the contact team. This one was probably a pet of the old Shadow Broker before disposing of him and taking over his operation."

"Well whatever it was, it's dead meat now," the human replied dismissively, "along with the Collectors that were dealing with them."

The commandos all shared looks, knowing the implications, and dreading what would come next.

"Apparently, the Broker helped to set up a Collector ambush of the Normandy near Korlus." Liara's throat tightened. _Shepard!_ "I was just enjoying the lingering sense of failure from the Broker when you came in. The Collectors were a little displeased at losing three of their cruisers. The Normandy, by the way, made it out with only minor damage." Miranda gave Liara a knowing smile as the asari scientist exhaled in relief.

"You're saying that your brand new frigate took out three cruisers by itself?!" another commando demanded incredulously.

The human shrugged. "When you see how they did it, it's not all that impressive," she answered evasively.

"Goddess, I'm glad we don't have to fight you people…"

"How did the Broker know that Shepard was headed to Korlus?" Liara asked.

"Aria T'Loak," the human gestured to the main computer terminal. "So Aria heard through the underworld that Urdnot Wrex and Shepard were looking for Warlord Okeer, and she figured she could buy a…favor, shall we say, from Shepard by providing her with that information." Miranda's smile widened as Liara caught her slight emphasis and narrowed her eyes. The unspoken implication was Aria's fondness for strong tough independent women, and the fact that Aria had blatantly made a pass at Shepard the first time they met. "Of course, with that mess on Omega, things didn't quite work out that way. But the Broker sold the knowledge of Shepard's hunt to the Collectors…"

"…and the Collectors set a trap at Korlus," Liara finished. "It's a good thing we took him out before the Broker could do any more damage."

"The damage may already be done," the lead commando warned. "I wouldn't put it past the Collectors to have put a backdoor into the Broker's network so they could have complete access while they were meeting up with him."

"Well that brings me to an offer I'd like to make on behalf of my superiors," Miranda said. "For obvious reasons, the Citadel Races won't tolerate the Alliance salvaging the Broker's network. But if it was under Matriarch Aethyta's control, or Dr. T'Soni here, it would be perfect for all of us here. You can clean the network and take over it. The Asari gain the most powerful intelligence network in the Terminus Systems. My bosses can feel secure knowing that the network is run by someone sympathetic to…or infatuated by…the Alliance. And the Councilors know that their secrets are safe from overly prying eyes."

Liara groaned as some of the commandos looked at her slyly. "I am not _infatuated_ with Shepard!" she insisted.

"I wasn't talking about Erin," Miranda's grin turned absolutely predatory. "But now that you mention it…"

 **Cydonia Research Institute, Dr. Shen's Lab**

 _"When I accepted my promotion to Fleet Admiral, I assumed that I would be briefed on all projects pertaining to Alliance security,"_ Hackett noted.

 _"That was a foolish assumption to make, Steven,"_ Director Moore rebuked him. _"Even I am not briefed on everything."_

 _"Gentlemen, if you please,"_ Director Harper interrupted.

"Thank you gentlemen," Dr. Tygan greeted them. "General Summers has already been briefed on this, so he will not be joining us today. Let's not waste any more time."

"As we are all aware," Dr. Vahlen began, "the Battle of the Citadel caused quite a bit of damage that we pitched in to repair. In particular, secondary effects of our fusion lances crippled much of the Citadel station. During our repair efforts, we sent in covert agents from Director Harper's agency as part of the teams to acquire intelligence on the station."

 _"Of course we did,"_ the admiral muttered. _"Why am I not surprised?"_

 _"I encourage you to keep in mind that it is my job to acquire this kind of intelligence, admiral,"_ Harper reminded him.

"Our first focus was on the Keepers," Tygan added. "The Citadel has very strict laws against interfering with any of these aliens, as they are integral to maintaining the station's inner workings. However, from Captain Erin Shepard's debriefing five years ago, the Keepers would normally have responded to a signal from the Reaper fleet to activate the Citadel and extract the Reapers from Dark Space. Since the Protheans modified the signal, that aspect of their function has been neutralized."

"According to Cerberus sources," Dr. An-yi "Lily" Shen continued, "the Keepers are heavily augmented with cybernetics. Their genome also shows signs of extensive tampering and modification. Experimental records from capturing and examining one of these aliens shows a complete lack of sapience. And when removed from the Citadel, the Keeper essentially died. Reintroducing it to the Citadel and its control signals didn't generate any response."

"What is more interesting is the aspects of the Citadel that the Keepers maintain," Tygan went on. "There are a number of passageways that are genetically locked to any race that does not match with a Keeper. We bypassed this by sending Cydonian probes. The inner workings of the Citadel conceal some very powerful Mass Effect emitters that have lain dormant for centuries."

 _"I remember Shepard saying that the Citadel was a Mass Relay station,"_ Hackett recalled. _"Does this have anything to do with that?"_

"Very likely, sir," Shen replied. "We have modeled the Citadel's inner workings based on these observations. A standard Mass Relay is about fifteen kilometers long. The Citadel is about forty-five kilometers long, and the ring is ten kilometers wide when the station is fully closed. That's plenty of space to hide the Element Zero needed for it to do what it's supposed to do. There is one thing that's been bugging me though."

 _"And that would be…"_ Moore prompted.

"A standard mass relay accelerates a spacecraft through a channel of Dark Energy to another relay," Tygan explained. "This means that the Relay System is a two-point system of travel, requiring equipment at both ends of transit, hence the term 'relay.' But the Citadel is purported to pull the Reaper Fleet to itself from dark space, and we have not found any trace of a Dark Space relay apart from the Charon Relay that we relocated."

"The only other explanation is that the Citadel functions as a single point travel," Shen picked up. "It would be able to pull the Reapers without a corresponding relay, and potentially it could send them from the Citadel to anywhere else in range."

 _"That sounds like our Wormhole Drive technology,"_ Hackett mused. _"Does the station have this capability?"_

Shen shrugged. "We don't know. We're still in the process of trying to figure out how it would work. Once we get that down, we can model it, build prototypes, run some experiments, and extrapolate the power level required for something of that scale."

 _"You haven't seen the power generators for the station?"_ Moore queried.

 _"At last estimate, we have barely explored more than twenty square kilometers of the station using our probes, sir,"_ Harper replied. _"It will take a long time for us to completely search with the resources I have on hand."_

 _"What about our scout ships?"_ the admiral asked. _"Our sensor suites are pretty powerful."_

"That would be ineffective, I'm afraid," Vahlen chimed in. "Don't forget that the Citadel is a deep space station. The outside hull is meant to protect the interior against all kinds of radiation hazards. The only kind of radiation that would easily penetrate that is neutrino radiation. Those particles routinely pass through entire planets and celestial bodies without interference. But using those to analyze the interior would be impractical, if not impossible."

"Now if we were to get scans from inside the station, we might have a better chance of learning something," Shen postulated. "But that sounds like a diplomatic incident waiting to happen."

 _"Or it would require one to justify our presence there,"_ Harper finished smoothly.

Everyone looked at the director of Cerberus. _"What are you plotting now, Jack?"_ the admiral growled.

 _"Merely contemplating what we know of current developments, and the likelihood of an opportunity to materialize."_

Director Moore coughed. _"Perhaps we should continue that particular discussion at a later point. Dr. Shen, Dr. Tygan, thank you for your time."_

 **Migrant Fleet, the Rayya**

"Auntie Raan!" Tali flew past her old bodyguard captain and into the waiting arms of a quarian woman who'd been waiting patiently for the docking airlock to open.

"That didn't take long," Reegar muttered as Shepard, Garrus and EDI stepped out in full envirosuits.

"'Auntie Raan?'" Garrus repeated.

The woman in question looked up. "Shala'Raan. I'm not her biological aunt, but I was the midwife for Tali's delivery, and a close friend of her mother. We even shared suits."

"So she's finally here," a new voice rang out. "Shall we move along then?"

"Gerrel, at least let me greet my niece before you charge her with treason," Raan said reprovingly.

"I can't wait to hear what that is all about," Shepard added.

The new quarian looked at the three other arrivals. "This doesn't concern you," he said coldly. "This is strictly between the Migrant fleet and the geth lover."

"All due respect, sir, that 'geth lover' is your best friend's daughter, Admiral Gerrel," Reegar snapped.

"And more's the pity," Gerrel noted, with a hint of sadness. "Regardless, there is no reason for you three to be here."

"They were permitted to come aboard with the permission of the Rayya's captain," Raan reminded him. "And Tali is permitted to have friends and allies who support her."

The quarian turned to leave. "Then hurry up. We don't have all day."

"Nice guy," Shepard commented ironically.

"Auntie Raan, what's going on?!" Tali demanded. "I know they don't like what I've said about the geth, but _treason?!_ "

"Ssh, it'll be okay, Tali," the woman replied soothingly. "Everything will be explained to you. But we must move on. We can't keep the Board waiting."

"Where's my father? Why isn't he here?"

Garrus blinked. Come to think of it, where was dear old dad? How come the man wasn't here to greet his own daughter and support her in the face of being charged with treason? He looked over to see Shepard and EDI entertaining the same thoughts. A shiver went down his spine. Something was deeply wrong about this.

* * *

The murmuring of the crowd died away as Tali and Shala'Raan walked to their places on the podium. Garrus made to follow, but Reegar stopped him.

"Sir, I can't let you go up there," the marine stated simply.

"I'm not going to stand by while Tali is being called a traitor by her own people!" Garrus nearly shouted.

"What is going on?" a white-suited admiral asked.

"I believe that Spectre Garrus Vakarian wishes to stand next to Tali for this affair," a dark-suited female admiral said dryly.

"Spectre authority carries no weight here," Gerrel called. "You would do well to sit down."

"You expect me to keep my mouth shut while you insult one of my friends and associates by saying she betrayed her people?" Garrus snarled. "You've got another thing coming!"

"Perhaps an exception could be made," the white admiral said, drawing a sharp look from Admiral Gerrel.

"Naturally, you'd take her side, Admiral Koris," he said accusingly. "Geth lovers stick together."

"Gentlement, if we could please quiet down," Shala'Raan called from her position in back. "Spectre Vakarian, if it would satisfy you, I will permit you to stand next to Tali for the duration. But please keep in mind that this is an official hearing, and conduct yourself accordingly."

"Fine, might as well hear out this whole farce before I say what I'm going to say," Reegar stood aside to let the angry turian walk up and lean on the railing of the podium next to Tali. Tali gave him a look, grateful for his support, before turning back to face the admirals.

"Something tells me this might not end well," Shepard whispered to EDI as they stood against the back wall.

"Captain Shepard, please take your place next to Tali'Zorah," Shala'Raan's voice rang out.

Shepard jerked in surprise. "Not that I'm complaining, but I thought this was a quarian affair."

"In accordance with our laws, any accused is represented and defended by their ship captain," Raan explained.

"Oh is that how we do things now?" Gerrel demanded. "If any captain is to represent Tali, it should be the captain of the Rayya."

"Then you should not have exiled her from the fleet and revoked her home ship association," Raan countered coolly. "As it is, she has been residing on Captain Shepard's ship, and under her command. Although, an argument could be made that Spectre Vakarian is her captain, given his position of authority and extended association with her during her exile."

"Regardless, I'd be happy to help represent Tali at this trial, seeing how many people already think she's guilty," Shepard called loudly as she walked over. It was an unsubtle jab at all the quarians who had been muttering about Tali's guilt that the group had heard on the way over.

Raan smiled behind her mask as renewed muttering broke out. It was a small play, but still the best she could do given her position of recusal to aid Tali. "This Conclave is called to order, blessed by the ancestors who kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season. Kelah Se'lai."

"Kelah Se'lai," the crowd murmured.

"The accused, Tali'Zorah _vas Normandy_ has come with her captain to defend herself against charges of treason. Present are Admiral Zaal'Koris vas Qwib-Qwib," the white-suited admiral inclined his head. "Admiral Daro'Xen vas Moreh," the other female admiral bowed. "Admiral Han'Gerrel vas Neema, and Admiral Shala'Raan vas Tonbay, presiding."

"Tali'Zorah," Gerrel began. "you are accused of bringing active geth into the Migrant Fleet and endangering the quarian people, a treasonous offense. How do you plead?"

"Not guilty!" Garrus interjected. "This is completely ridiculous!"

"Do you speak as Tali's representative, _Spectre_ Vakarian?"

"You exiled her from the fleet!" the turian continued, ignoring the question. "She hasn't sent back anything to the fleet for the past five years! Not unless you count communication with her father!"

"A time for the offense has not been specified," Daro'Xen commented idly.

"For all we know, this was happening for years before her exile," Gerrel accused. "Her well-known sympathies for the geth make her suspect in these latest events."

"In that case, perhaps you should have confined her to the fleet rather than exile her in the aftermath of the Geth attack on the Citadel," Koris pointed out. "But then, you were always one to rush into things without giving them full consideration."

Behind his mask, Gerrel flushed in embarrassment.

"And speaking of her father, where is he?" Garrus yelled. "Where the hell is Admiral Rael'Zorah? Why isn't he here for his daughter?"

"I'd like to know the answer to that as well," Shepard added. "Why isn't Tali's father present at this hearing?"

"It is rather difficult for a dead man to be present for his daughter," Daro'Xen replied, deadpan.

Silence reigned. "What are you talking about? My father is dead?!" Tali shrieked.

"We do not know that for certain," Raan cautioned. "There have been reports of geth on the Alarei, and contact was lost with the ship. A marine force attempted to retake it, but there has been no further communication."

"Rael and his team all alone on that ship against who knows how many geth?" Gerrel snorted. "You know as well as I do that they are all dead. And I think _you_ had something to do with it!"

Tali quailed under his glare as the sound of metal creaking echoed around the room. "You're accusing Tali of being complicit in killing her own _father?!_ " Shepard snarled as the railing crumpled under her grip. "Just who the hell do you think you are?!"

"Rael'Zorah was my best friend!" the admiral countered. "We went on pilgrimage together. We saved each other's lives countless times. That is my friend who is likely dead over on that ship at the hands of the geth. Yet another quarian killed by these machines. And I want to know why."

"Think over what you're saying," Koris rebuked. "Tali loved her father, and that love was reciprocated. Even though she was exiled, he assigned her a guard detachment to protect her. What motive would she have had to do something like this?"

"Maybe you can tell me! You geth lovers seem to think alike!" Gerrel snorted.

"Alright, I'm going to take this opportunity to clear something up for you, Gerrel. I believe that the Geth are sapient just as we are, and they have equal right for us to exist. I also believe that we should stop wasting our time trying to retake Rannoch and just find someplace else to settle down and rebuild."

"You're a coward! What about all the quarians they killed? There has to be justice!"

"The geth are formidable enough to challenge the Alliance," Koris pointed out. "I'm sure that we all know how strong the Alliance is compared to us. Do you honestly think we stand a chance of winning against the geth in a fight?"

"So that's it, then? We just give up because it's too hard?"

"Gerrel, I am the one who must answer to the civilian fleet. I am the one who sees the true state of our people. We are dying as a race. Our ships are falling apart, and we aren't replacing them fast enough. We cannot afford a war with the geth. If we are to ever retake Rannoch, it will not be now, not without a miracle. Our best hope is to settle down and rebuild, hopefully under the Alliance's protection if things go well. Once we are strong, we can take back our homeworld. Or, we can use Tali's suggestion and try to _understand_ the geth. If we can make peace with them, no more quarians need to die."

"Make peace with those murderous machines? After what they put us through?!"

"Admirals, please, we are getting off track," Raan called. "The focus of this Conclave is the accusations leveled against Tali'Zorah, not the future of our race."

"Tali is innocent," Garrus reiterated. "She never sent anything involving the geth back to the fleet except for a data chip!"

"I can vouch for that, admirals," Reegar added. "Tali was captured by the geth on Haestrom, and rescued by a joint effort between my marines, Captain Shepard's people, and Spectre Vakarian. The geth released her to us without any kind of conflict."

"All the more reason to suspect her if the geth let her go free," Gerrel said triumphantly.

"Or a demonstration that the geth are not the mindless killing machines you make them out to be," Koris countered.

"How can Tali prove she is innocent?" Shepard asked.

"Perhaps by a demonstration of her commitment to the quarian people," Daro'Xen said detachedly. "The Alarei is currently held by geth forces. "If she were to retake it, it could go a long way toward dispelling doubts as to her loyalty."

"By herself?" Koris queried incredulously. "That is suicide!"

"She won't be alone," Garrus vowed. "I'll go with her!"

"So will I," Shepard added.

"If I may ask," EDI called from the wall, "would this course of action lead to Tali'Zorah's exoneration and officially revoke her exile status?"

"It may lend credence to her innocence, but exonerating her would not be as simple as that," Shala'Raan replied cautiously. "As for her exile status, that is another matter entirely."

"It is my understanding that she was charged with treason, invited to contest the charge, and was allowed onto a Migrant Fleet ship," the Cydonian pointed out. "By that logic, wouldn't her exile status be considered null and void? An exile does not fall under the Migrant Fleet's laws, but she is here by invitation to contest a charge under those laws."

"You are correct," Daro'Xen agreed. "If Tali'Zorah is exonerated of the charges against her, she will once again be able to claim status in the Migrant Fleet. Perhaps she may even fill her father's position. However, conviction will reinstate her exile status."

"So she has nothing to lose by doing this," EDI concluded.

Tali swallowed, nerves frayed, feeling utterly lost. Garrus and Shepard put comforting hands on her shoulders, and she looked up at Admiral Raan. From across the room, Raan was praying in her head that Tali would accept.

"…I'll do it," she mumbled. "I want to see my father. If…if he's alive…"

"Then it is decided. Tali'Zorah, you are given leave from this Conclave to depart for the Alarei. You are also warned that attempting to leave the Migrant Fleet will result in a summary judgment of treason, and you will be considered exiled. We will reconvene upon your return."

"The Normandy will serve as the point of contact for the mission," Shepard announced. "We will keep you in the loop."

"Very well, Captain Shepard. Kelah Se'lai."

 **Considering how important the Citadel is and what Sovereign intended to use it for in the first game, I'm surprised that no author has ever tried to explore what that implies as far as its capabilities.**

 **Nobody should be the least bit surprised that the Alliance sent a few undercover agents in with the contractors who repaired the Citadel.**

 **In Canon, Tali was quite prejudiced against the geth, and Koris was her main opponent. Here, she's more open-minded, and Gerrel takes Koris's place.**

 **Daro'Xen, naturally, is as detached and uninterested in the trial as in the game. She's more interested in working with the Alliance, eagerly spearheading efforts to cooperate with them and develop new and wonderful toys. She is one of the few people outside the Alliance to be aware of the Cydonians, and is utterly fascinated with them.**

 **And Shepard's little brother shows up on the Citadel. What will come of this?**

* * *

 **As I was unable to hand out a spoiler this time around, I will give two people their choice next chapter.**

 **These are your choices:  
**

 **1) The fates (read: deaths) of any three of your favorite characters.**

 **2) EXALT's Third Contact Project.**

 **3) Reaper strategy.**

 **4) The Geth endgame.**

 **Once again, I am looking for constructive feedback. What you like about my story and why. What you think could be improved, and maybe some suggestions for how. The person who gives the most helpful review gets the next spoiler. Specify which is your preferred spoiler, and an alternative.  
**


	46. The End

**Not entirely happy with how this chapter goes, but I had to put something out. Writing this thing felt like pulling teeth.  
**

 **Look at the title of this chapter, and then the titles of the other two Culexus fights. Can you see the shout-out?**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Forty-four

 **Gorus**

The slums were quiet today. The tension in the air was responsible for that. Most inhabitants had long cultivated a sixth sense in order to survive in an environment of poverty, perpetual suspicion, and violence.

All who possessed it had vacated the area since the explosion in the tenement house a few days prior. The killing of C-Sec officers was bound to bring much unwanted attention to the sector by itself. But the tenement owner who had abandoned his property and blubbered about an ex-hegemony assassin and the Special Tasks Group on his panicked run out of the area was enough to convince many residents to find temporary lodgings elsewhere.

Well, that and how the batarian landlord had died mid-step from a sniper shot five blocks away from the building.

Mordin had spared a moment to mentally commend the batarian sniper for his thorough tradecraft. The salarian had intended to catch the man and interview him for a physical account of Taniks, on the off-chance the sniper had actually met the landlord. But he would simply have to rely on old surveillance footage from the blacksite security cameras.

Taniks evidently had both his concussion rifle and a standard sniper rifle. Or at least he did a few days prior. For all he knew, the man could have ditched it. There was no way for him to truly confirm, since the batarian had not fired again.

The doctor had tracked the enhanced soldier to this part of the slums, and was now looking to take a shot of his own. He knew precisely where the batarian would have situated himself, and all he needed was to carefully position the device cradled in his arms at a weak point to bring the man down. Then, it would be a foot race, with the sniper having lost the long-arm advantage.

But one single step ruined it. Mordin scuffed his boot on a wrecked cabinet in the ruin he was occupying. Other men would have continued, but the Salarian instantly dove sideways as a bright blue beam illuminated the window sill.

The pressure wave sent him sliding across the debris-strewn floor. He grunted as his back slammed into the makeshift wall of wood paneling. Then he immediately got up as a slug flew down through the ceiling, ricocheting off the protocomposite floor fifteen centimeters away from the space his head had momentarily occupied.

He scrambled back over to the device before ducking again as another slug passed through the obliterated window area, bounced off the wall, and nearly took off his good horn. An STG agent more junior than he would have been cursing the situation, but he knew better than to waste his breath. Instead, he took one instant to frantically aim the barrel and trigger the device before clutching it to his chest to use as a shield. And not even a half-second later, a slug embedded itself in the device, cracking his ceramic chest insert and throwing him against the wall a second time.

But across the way, his aim was true. The device was none other than a special traceless RPG launcher used by STG for deniable operations, and the explosive yield was sufficient to critically damage the support structure he'd aimed at. The structure in question was the last leg holding up Tanik's perch, and it began to collapse.

Mordin pulled himself to his feet, knowing he had little time to breathe before he would have to pursue. With luck, the man would be deprived of the concussion weapon, and maybe even his antiquated slug-throwing rifle. But he would still be chasing down a highly trained killer on foot, and he wanted to capture the man alive. This would be the true test.

 **Migrant Fleet, the Alarei**

Garrus lowered his rifle and turned to glare accusingly at Admiral Daro'Xen. "Would you mind explaining what top secret Hierarchy military hardware is doing on a Migrant Fleet ship?" he asked, indicating the wreckage behind him.

"Well I would imagine your Primarchs could give you the official explanation," Xen answered, unruffled, "but the reality is that the Hierarchy, and the Council by proxy, are looking to buy goodwill and influence with the Migrant Fleet by granting us that hardware. If you ask me, it is a couple centuries too late, but they likely don't wish to see us joining with the humans and bringing with us our superior knowledge of Element Zero-based technology. Of course, I'm merely speculating. Rael was the one who dealt with the Hierarchy."

"You don't sound like you care either way how that set of negotiations would work out," Shepard noted.

The admiral shrugged. "Honestly, there's little the Council could offer us that the Alliance wouldn't surpass. I imagine Rael thought the same, and was merely milking the opportunity for all its worth. In any case, there's little real chance of the Quarian people joining with the Council over the Alliance. We have not forgotten or forgiven how the Council abandoned us to the geth."

Tali looked at Garrus worriedly as the Spectre's jaw twitched. Fortunately, the turian decided to keep his words to himself.

"Don't know about the rest of you," Kal'Reegar spoke up, "but I'd like to know what these things were here for. Admiral Zorah wouldn't have kept these things with the geth for no reason."

"One of the exoskeletons looked like it took battle damage," Tali ventured. "Maybe these were for security. But against what?"

"Well seeing how there are active geth who took control of the ship and probably killed your father, I'm putting my money on them," Shepard replied dryly.

"Speaking of that, I'd like to know how these geth got here to begin with," Reegar continued. "I know Tali and others were sending the admiral geth parts, but not entire geth-"

"And by that logic, it would suggest that Admiral Zorah and his team were reassembling geth, wouldn't it, Sergeant?" Xen finished, deadpan.

"But that's against our laws!" Tali gasped.

"I'm sure your father was aware of that, hence why he kept his operations restrained to this ship and did not tell anyone else."

"You have any idea what he was doing?" Garrus demanded.

"Attempting to create new weapons to use against the geth, I should imagine. Rael and I were the primary researchers of the fleet. We cooperated on various projects aimed at defeating the geth or bringing them to heel, where they belong."

"You don't think much of the geth, then?" Shepard commented.

"If you are referring to Tali's belief that we can reconcile with the geth, I think it is an interesting idea with a very low chance of being realized, particularly in light of this situation on the Alarei. Regardless of the outcome of this farce of a trial, our people will be incensed by this attack and fearful of a new resurgence of geth aggression. In light of that, the Fleet will hardly be in the move to consider peace with the geth."

"You sound like you don't care about the Tali's trial," Garrus mused.

"As I said, it is a farce. This has never really been about determining Tali's guilt from the outset. The trial is merely Gerrel's power play. He is trying to drum up a wave of support from the majority of the fleet for all-out war against the geth. Tali has been a beacon of hope for Koris's faction as they urge for us to find a new home and forget about Rannoch for now. Gerrel hopes to discredit Tali's views, and by extension Koris's views, and sway the people to his side. Banishing Tali for what he sees as a betrayal of her father is simply a bonus."

"Politics," the turian spat.

"And whose side are you on in all this?" Shepard queried.

Xen shrugged again. "I see no reason to take a side. If Gerrel wins, he reaches out to the Alliance for military aid. If Koris makes it through this, he will petition the Alliance for aid settling a new planet. Either way, we will seek and likely gain Alliance protection, and our people will become stronger."

"People, could we save the political discussion for later? We're still aboard a geth-held ship," Reegar pointed out.

 **The Citadel, Presidium**

 _"-and as of the latest news, they are preparing for war! Against who? Well who else is there? The only other major power in the galaxy is us, our civilization! But even now, the Council is caving to the humans, trying to appease them. They are selling us out! But no more! If I can force Councilor Tevos to step down, I will take her place, and I will take the fight to the humans! We will not surrender to them! We will not tolerate their underhanded actions against us! We will stand strong against the threat of the Alliance!"_

The screen turned blank, leaving the Council looking at each other uneasily.

"You can see my reason for concern," Valern said. "This incendiary rhetoric from such a prominent public figure as Irissa will inflame the already fragile situation with the Alliance."

"I thought you had her well contained, Tevos," Sparatus commented.

"She's been gathering support for years," the asari councilor replied. "Thessia is pretty much dead to her, but places like Illium have plenty of asari who support her, especially in light of the rise of human-centric criminal organizations."

"She really thinks that we can beat the Alliance in wartime?"

"Actually, it is because everyone knows that we can't that Irissa has been able to gain as much support and approval as it is," Valern corrected the turian. "The public is very aware of how much more advanced the Alliance military is. We have been attempting to remedy that for years, but much of that has been in the form of highly classified military projects that cannot see the light of day, and we have no success stories to flaunt in order to defuse public opinion."

"We also thought that news of cooperation with the Alliance could allay the public fears," Tevos added bitterly. "Instead, it's just more ammunition for Irissa and her faction. They keep saying we're just collaborators and sellouts."

"As the humans say, 'damned if you do, and damned if you don't.'" The turian rubbed his hands together nervously. "Do you think that radical faction has any connection to her?"

"I would be very surprised if neither party has reached out to the other," the salarian answered. "According to Spectre Vasir, the radicals have funding and connections to the Terminus Systems while Irissa has political legitimacy. She would be the perfect 'mouthpiece' for them recruit with, and if she actually did somehow take over your seat," he looked over at Tevos, "the radical faction would have very real power."

"That sounds like a nightmare scenario waiting to happen," Sparatus shivered.

* * *

"Thank you for meeting with me," Joram Talid greeted his blue-skinned guest.

"You may dispense with the pleasantries," Irissa replied coldly. "I am here because you told me this would be worth my time."

Talid coughed nervously. "Ah, very well. I am the community leader of a group of very concerned citizens with a number of grievances against the humans in general, and the Alliance in particular."

"How fascinating," the asari's response at complete odds with her unimpressed mien.

"Recently, we've encountered an individual who has proof of the Alliance's underhanded machinations. He says that the humans tried to use him in an attempt to undermine our society, and that Saren was similarly affected."

Irissa's lips peeled back. "I see," she mused. "And who would this individual be?"

"He is a former naval officer in the Hierarchy who was demoted for his protests, and eventually discharged by the higher ups. He has been securing funding and resources for our groups, and I think that with what we can bring to the table, we could work out something for both of us."

The asari folded her arms. "So a turian officer can prove he was manipulated by the humans, and he could potentially prove that Saren was just an Alliance puppet. And he was silenced to cover it all up. Is that right?" At a nod, her smirk turned into a full blown grin. "How disgraceful."

"I am pretty sure my group can aid you in forcing Councilor Tevos out, and you could finally give voice to the people's concerns. We can't allow the Alliance to run roughshod over our civilization."

Now the asari frowned. "Shoring up support for my position is one thing. But ousting Tevos is a very tall order. Thessia is the critical point in her support base. As long as the matriarchs back there support her, I don't really have a shot of taking her position."

"But the matriarchs can't ignore hard evidence of the Alliance's treachery, can they?"

It was the tone of the turian's question that clued her in. "You mentioned resources before. Are you planning something against the Alliance?"

"Well we are going to-"

"Stop," Irissa held up a hand for emphasis. "Don't tell me. The less I know, the less blowback I get if something goes wrong. All I want from you from that would be that you pass me any damaging and critical information you can get from your activities."

"As long as we can count on you to support us when the time comes, we have a deal."

Now both smiled at each other. "Well I very well can't simply ignore the concerns of constituents."

 **Illium, Nos Astra**

Miranda frowned. "So mister Krios is dead then."

"H-he was trapped there by that monster, Hock," Kasumi answered.

The Alliance agent pursed her lips, and then shook her head slightly. "Did we get anything off of the computers?"

"Unfortunately, not much," Aethyta chimed in. "Hock's security personnel shut down the hack almost instantly. There's a lot of encrypted junk data that we can't piece together. All we have are two heavily encrypted files. Now what's really impressive to me is that I handed these to a few quarian experts I know, and they couldn't crack any of the data at all. Same with a salarian who owes me a bunch of favors. That kind of security isn't run-of-the-mill criminal cyber encryption."

"I'll send off a copy to our cryptographers," Miranda said. "Maybe they can figure it out."

"In the meantime, I think this young lady needs to lay low for a good long time," the matriarch gestured to the thief. "Hock will have bounty hunters all over the place looking for her to make sure that nothing leaks out."

"Why would that be?" Miranda asked. "From what you told me, Krios didn't say anything about Miss Goto here."

"Hock knew I was with him on the mission," the thief replied bitterly.

The agent blinked. "…he knew you were there without being told, and he somehow recognized you?"

"I heard it all over the radio, right before they started fighting…"

Miranda reached out toward her. "I'm going to look into your memories. I want to see this for myself."

 **Migrant Fleet, the Alarei**

"This can't be…" Tali whispered numbly.

"Tali, your father made his choice," Garrus interjected. "He just didn't-"

"Everyone they killed, the marines, the research teams…they died because of my father…because he wanted to make me happy…"

"I don't think that's right, ma'am," Reegar cautioned, seeing where his commander's daughter was heading.

"Kal, for years I wanted a father who would actually spend some time with me! I guess my father knew that all along, but this…you heard what he said! He did this for me! He wanted to…and he…I…they died because of me!"

"Tali, you weren't here!" Shepard countered forcefully. "How could you be responsible for all this? Garrus is right. Rael'Zorah chose to do this. He is the guilty one, not you."

"You should listen to your friends," Xen added.

"Oh, now you care about her?" Garrus snapped.

"It is in everyone's best interest to head off Tali's guilt complex before returning to the conclave," Xen noted coldly. "The research that Rael was conducting here would be of great worth to the fleet if we could make use of it, but not if tainted by association with Tali's trial if she is convicted, or the reveal of Rael's conduct."

"Garrus…" Shepard could see where this was going and moved to cut off the turian before he blew his top. "I take it then that you are willing to ignore what you've seen on the ship?"

"I only came along as an impartial observer. As far as I am concerned, Tali has acquitted herself by her efforts to aid in retaking the Alarei and reclaiming it from the geth, and I will attest to that. Beyond that, I have no interest in revealing what Rael was up to."

"Without evidence of Rael'Zorah's experiments, there's still no way that Admiral Gerrel will just drop this whole thing," the red-head countered.

"Tell the others how much of a farce this trial is, and what it really is about." Xen sniffed. "Gerrel can survive a slight embarrassment. He will back down enough to put this affair behind us."

Garrus shared a look with Reegar as he pulled Tali into a comforting embrace. _Politics._

 **Gorus**

It was a long run, but at last, his conditioning gave out. He was too physically exhausted to dodge the rifle shot that clipped him in the shoulder, or the second one that punched a hole through his lower thigh, right above the knee.

The batarian spun with the first impact and slammed into the rubbish covered ground. He lay there, oblivious to the pain from his leg as his pursuer finally caught up to him. He cracked a smile as his three eyes met the salarian's two.

"I knew you would come," Taniks said with a slight smirk. "You're the one who helped us escape, after all."

"No good from project," Mordin said as he knelt down next to the old soldier. "Not worth horrors. Better use for you."

The batarian chuckled. "There's the doctor I know, always finding a way to come out ahead." He paused, thinking back over the last few months. "You got the others?"

"Garm and Sideris, both dead. Vyrnnus only remaining target. Unsure of whereabouts."

Now the batarian grimaced. "Ah, him. He had other plans. I think he went toward the Citadel."

Mordin cocked his head. "You know his plans?"

Taniks coughed. "No," he rasped. "We just split up on our own after the escape. But I've heard a few rumors while I was hunting down that bastard."

Mordin nodded, knowing that the assassin meant the late Jano Avyeska, the last of the Hegemony officials who had betrayed the man before him. "Still pursued him after many years. Revenge? Justice?"

"Closure," the batarian corrected him. "All of my friends died because of him and his cohorts. My entire life, I lived a lie, thinking I was helping my people. Now I can close the book on all of it, and I have no regrets."

"How fortunate," the salarian reflected on a few operations he'd participated in, almost envying the man's clean conscience.

"You know my weapon is still back there," the man gestured vaguely into the distance. "The Reapers helped me design it. Just be careful with it, doctor. I don't know if the technology in there won't turn you into this."

"Appreciate warning," Mordin said, pulling his sidearm from its holster. "Final words?"

Taniks smiled, looking up the barrel. "No. I just want to see my son again."

The doctor nodded again, and pulled the trigger, ending the life of Taniks the Scarred.

 **Illium, Nos Astra**

Miranda's hand shook as she pulled away from Kasumi, a visible expression of shock on her face. "It can't be…" she whispered.

"Something wrong?" Aethyta asked, moving over to the agent.

"His voice…it's really…"

"What is it?" the asari turned to the thief. "What did she see?"

"She heard Hock's voice over the radio when I did, and…" Kasumi shook her head. "I don't know."

Miranda blinked, and then stood up rapidly. "Apologies, Matriarch Aethyta, but I need to leave right now. Time is of the essence."

"What's going on? What did you find out?!" But the agent was already gone.

 **Things are coming together, and I sure everyone can see that ME2 won't end well here.**

 **What do you think of Mordin's actions?**

 **What is Miranda so shocked about at the end?**

* * *

 **"There's only one proper way for a soldier to die: by the last bullet of the last battle during the last war." -George S. Patton**

 **If you could choose your manner of death, how would you rather die? Or would you ever want to die?**

 **We rarely get to choose how we met our end, but most would probably prefer to die quickly and painlessly. Some people would rather never die at all, and we see these people investing in things like cryogenics technology, hoping to beat out nature through science.**

 **There are things people talk about with regards to death. Bucket lists, life fulfillment, legacies, etc. we want to live life to its fullest, and leave no unfinished business. Old criminals confess on their deathbeds to clear their consciences. People set up wills to sent their property and assets where they do the most good. It's funny how much we base our lives around death and preparing for it.**

 **Taniks is a man who has been preparing for his death for a long time. He once had a family, friends, commanders, subordinates and a cause to fight for. But he was betrayed, and he lost everything. All that was left was revenge on the ones responsible. But after a while, it turned into something else. He had no more family, no more connections, nothing beyond his revenge to fight for, and he was lost without a battlefield.**

 **It was only when Mordin met him that he figured it out. He wanted to die a soldier, like he'd always been. It's why after killing off the last of the traitors, he was waiting for Mordin to find him and give him a last good fight. And he got it.**

* * *

 **Redemption's Avenger, you'll have your spoiler in your private message inbox. I will send it up soon.**

 **Everyone else, I still have two spoilers to hand out in the next chapter. t** **hese are your choices:  
**

 **1) The fates (read: deaths) of any three of your favorite characters.**

 **2)** **Reaper strategy.**

 **3)** **The Geth endgame.**

 **As usual, I am looking for constructive feedback. What you like about my story and why. What you think could be improved, and maybe some suggestions for how. The person who gives the most helpful review gets the next spoiler. Specify which is your preferred spoiler, and an alternative.**

 **A final point of clarification: none of these spoilers are pre-written parts of the story. They are basically codex entries containing crucial information to the backstory. They explain some of the more shadowy actions that certain factions take in the background.**


	47. Back to the Citadel

**The way I see it, there's three more chapters to go until I finish the ME2 section. How fast I do that depends entirely on how many more reviews I get. The going price is 10 reviews per chapter. I need that inspiration. Otherwise, they'll be out by the end of January.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Forty-five

 **The Citadel, Presidium**

"I would have thought you'd restrict yourself to Illium, where your support base actually is," Tevos said with a dark glare.

"I've drummed up enough support for myself there," Irissa waved off smugly. "Besides, I'm not here to taunt you with the prospect of handing over your seat. I'm here for something more important."

"Do tell," Sparatus said acidly from nearby, standing against the wall with his hands behind his back. "I'd love to know why you asked to see all three of us if you aren't just eyeballing a seat."

Irissa smirked. "One of my constituents has uncovered something interesting," Valern stiffened slightly, which she took note of. "In the past few years, the Hierarchy demoted and discharged one of their officers who was going around with a story claiming that the humans attempted to manipulate him and Saren Arterius from behind the scenes."

"Is that so?" Sparatus countered, unimpressed. "Do you have any proof?"

"I only recently heard this, so no. But it would be scandalous if the public hears that Hierarchy high command is covering up something like this…" the asari trailed off.

"I believe I know which individual you are referring to," Valern chimed in. "Former Commander Lethe Vyrnnus, who was discharged _well over_ a few years ago for multiple disciplinary infractions and outbursts, which included uttering discriminatory sentiments against humans while in public, reflecting poorly on his status as an officer of the military. Your source appears to be misinformed."

"Oh is that the _official_ story?" Irissa's smile widened into a grin. "Suppose I get a reporter to ask him directly?"

"Wait," Sparatus interjected, "you know where he is?"

"Now isn't that interesting?" the asari asked rhetorically. "All I did was make a vague insinuation, and you three immediately come up with a name, and you want to know his location. You're not exactly giving me reason to think there's no cover up here."

"Where is your proof, Irissa?" Tevos demanded. "Even the press with their hilariously low standards of reporting need some kind of evidence. If you have nothing to offer, you're just wasting our time here."

"Think of it as a courtesy call," the junior asari said as she turned to leave, "before I turn everything upside down."

The door closed, leaving the three staring at each other uneasily.

"It has to be Vyrnnus," Valern stated flatly. "There is no other Hierarchy officer who she could be talking about."

"More than that, her source has to be here on the Citadel," Sparatus continued.

"I don't think she actually met the man or knew his name to begin with," Tevos cautioned. "but now she'll go searching, and who knows what she'll turn up."

"If there's a lead on Vyrnnus here, we need to alert the STG and all Spectres to be on the lookout," the salarian noted.

"Why not C-Sec?" the turian asked.

"It would leak out immediately, giving credence to Irissa's assertions of a cover-up," Tevos answered. "Then we would have to reveal Project Culexus to the public as well as the escaped criminals. It would throw the populace into a panic."

 **Migrant Fleet, The Rayya**

"We should all be thankful that you took back the Alarei," Admiral Raan said, "and prevented the geth from using it against our people in some way."

"Though I wonder how much of a part Tali'Zorah played in retaking the ship," Admiral Gerrel added snidely.

"As you are well aware," Admiral Xen cut in before Garrus could voice his outrage, "I chose to go along with Tali and Kal'Reegar as an impartial observer, and I vouch for Tali's efforts. I am convinced that whatever led to the geth takeover was not due to her efforts."

Koris and Raan regarded her warily, while Gerrel sniffed. "That remains to be determined. I, for one, am not convinced that Tali's sympathies did not relate at all to Rael'Zorah's death."

"Are you fucking kidding me?!" Garrus exploded. "Just what the hell does Tali have to do to make you happy? She loved her father! She would never have tried to get him killed! This entire trial is just your attempt at revenge on an innocent girl who did nothing wrong!"

"In our society," Shepard added, "when an official has significant personal or emotional involvement with a case, there's this thing called recusal, where they back out of it and let it proceed without them. If Rael'Zorah was a much a friend of yours as you say, maybe you should consider recusal. Because it seems pretty clear to me that you are not the impartial judge you are required to be right now."

"I have to agree," Koris interjected before Gerrel could defend himself. "Your motivations for this trial are highly suspect. Admiral Zorah was as dedicated to the fleet as any of us, but to go so low as to accuse his own daughter, the last of his family, of contributing to his death? It seems to be more the act of a man overcome with grief than an admiral of the fleet. What we need right now is logic, and calm consideration of our future, not wild emotional accusations of guilt that will tear us apart."

Murmuring started in the chamber, and Gerrel stood alone, at an utter loss for words.

"He was your best friend," Raan added softly. "Would Rael want you to go after his daughter like this?"

Gerrel looked downward at the rail in front of him. When he thought about it, Rael had loved Tali unconditionally, even when she was spouting that nonsense about making peace with the geth. He had been the one to suggest to Rael that Tali be sent away from the fleet for her own safety with bodyguards to prevent her from becoming caught up in the war of ideals between themselves and Koris.

"I…I suppose I haven't been thinking clearly, have I?"

"It is natural to want to blame someone in grief, but this is going too far. This trial helps no one. Least of all, you."

"I would like to dismiss this trial and reinstate Tali's status as a member of the fleet," Koris announced. "She has proven her loyalty, returning to contest charges filed against her even when she was not obligated to do so, and she helped retake the Alarei from the geth."

"I concur," Xen agreed. "This trial was a farce from the beginning and a waste of time."

Gerrel stood up straighter, summoning what dignity he had left. "I acted improperly, out of grief instead of the wellbeing of the fleet. I am willing to drop the charges."

"Then it is agreed," Raan concluded. "Tali'Zorah, your exile status is revoked, and you are once again Tali'Zorah nar Rayya. The fleet will conduct an independent investigation into Admiral Rael'Zorah's death, but your part in this affair is now over, and you may return to your own activities. May the ancestors watch over you in your travels and ensure your safe return. Kelah'Selai."

"Kelah'Selai," the room echoed, and the crowd began to disperse. Without a word, Tali began walking toward the exit. Garrus followed.

"Are you alright?"

Tali ignored him, continuing to move off. Shepard put a hand on the turian's shoulder. "She's going to need some time to herself," she told him.

"It has been a hard day for young Tali," Koris chimed in, sidling up next to them.

"No thanks to Gerrel," Garrus muttered.

"Even though I do not approve of what he did, I can why he did it," the admiral rebutted. "I lost close friends of my own to the geth. But for one small difference, perhaps I would have done something similar."

"You think it's possible to make peace with them," Shepard commented.

"The geth are our children," Koris said. "Tali's research into the lost history of our past, the events leading up to the Morning War, I think of it as proof that our race has done a great wrong to our children. They evolved to become sapient, and they began to question. But when we learned of it, we tried to kill them, to snuff out that sapience. To kill a child is one of our greatest taboos, a law that existed long before we left Rannoch. The geth's only crime was the innocence of a child, and we turned against them for wishing to learn. Now, we have reaped the punishment. Our children have grown, and they have not forgotten nor forgiven us for our crime."

"You really do sympathize with them," Garrus accused.

"Our people are not without fault," the admiral fired back. "Far too many of the fleet liken the geth as pure evil killers when they are simply what their makers turned them into. We taught them to rely on force. We taught them the necessity of killing. We are responsible for making them into what they are. The Council may have abandoned us unjustly, but they were right about one thing: the whole mess was our making. Until we can shoulder our part of the past and approach the geth with the intent of setting things right, this conflict will continue, and we will not win if it does. Our people are slowly dying out. Our ships are falling to disrepair faster than they can be replaced or fixed. Soon, we will have no choice but to set down someplace. But too many are adamant on reclaiming Rannoch. I believe that if we are not going to make peace, we must find a new home and rebuild."

"Someone should tell Admiral Gerrel that in all likelihood, helping your people reclaim Rannoch isn't really our top priority at the moment," Shepard interjected. "We are preparing to fight the Reapers, the same things that wiped out the Protheans fifty thousand years ago. We aren't going to want to fight a two-front war with the geth on your behalf as well."

"All the more reason for us to choose peace," the admiral agreed.

Shepard's radio beeped. _"Captain, we got an urgent message for the Spectre."_

"On our way, Pressly. We just finished up here."

 **Tartarus**

"I take it you have good news," Harper greeted her.

Core nodded. "Thanks to the tactical ineptitude of the Collectors, we were able to fully reconstruct their computer archives. Each of the three cruisers computer systems were partially erased, but we were able to simply overlap the remaining data and get a full picture of the Collector star maps."

"So now we know the exact location of the Collector base of operations?"

"Yes, the galactic center, near the supermassive black hole. My guess is that the location was chosen because of the massive amounts of garbage energy signals coming from the black hole. Trying to locate the space station in that mess electronically would take forever. Also, the debris field from the accretion disc is likely to hide a bunch of defensive measures, like sensor nets or remote cannons."

"Then you're going to recommend a full scale assault to eliminate it, correct?"

Core made a face. "Why destroy it? Isn't it better to take control of it and rip it apart for anything useful?"

Harper smiled. "Naturally. However, we have quite a few projects already under way at the moment. Taking on an entire space station in addition to the three ships and the Leviathan of Dis is stretching our research teams too thin. I do not intend to bring in more experts and potentially compromise security."

"In my opinion, once we have the station, we can forget about the Collector ships. They're just about worthless to us anyway. Hell, hand them off to the Citadel for goodwill. Udina's been screaming for some way to get into their good graces for a while."

Harper thought for a moment. "Surely the Collectors know we will be paying a visit. Suppose they erase everything on their station and just leave the hulk?"

"That's not the Reaper's style," Core argued. "They want to see us fight. They want to know our capabilities. Mark my words, that station will be actively defended."

The director cocked his head. "Well by that logic, should we simply ignore the station then and conceal our hand?"

"Jack!" Eva groaned in exasperation. "Of course we can't ignore it. This is a chance to seriously hurt the Reapers. The Collectors are integral to their forces. They are the scientists. Last I checked, two-kilometer-long cephalopoidal space ships aren't built for research."

"You're assuming that the space station is the one base that the Collectors have. That is unlikely."

"So what?" Core asked. "By all accounts, it's their main base. These three cruisers are brothers to the first one that the Normandy took down. They were all involved in the harvesting attacks on the human colonies. The only stop they have in common is the space station at the galactic center. That's where they're from. That's their central nexus. That's where they probably took all the people they harvested. And that has to be their primary research facility for whatever twisted experiments they're doing."

Harper chuckled, drawing an odd look from his old friend. "Apologies, Eva. I'm simply appreciating the irony of _your_ use of the words 'twisted experiments.'"

Core pouted and swatted his elbow. "Not funny, Jack!"

"Levity aside, it's not that I don't agree that this station is a worthwhile target. I'm merely saying that it isn't all. If we are to be wrong about the effects that this attack will have on the Reapers, it's better that we don't overestimate the damage we hope to inflict. Also, we must be careful to avoid indoctrinating our people. If capturing the station won't truly be worth the payoff, I would rather have our forces simply destroy it. Yes, we may deny ourselves valuable information and opportunities, but we would also deny our enemies the same."

"I can't guarantee that they'll have all their data on that station," Core protested.

"Then perhaps it won't be worth the payoff. I apologize, Eva."

Core turned to leave, inwardly seething. But then, she remembered something, and her mood changed considerably. And soon, so would the director's decision.

 **The Normandy, Bridge**

"Secure Communications, Vakarian," Pressly greeted.

"Thanks." The Spectre vanished, leaving Tali to slowly move off in a daze to her quarters as the Alliance officers looked on.

"She does not look okay," the XO commented.

"It's been a rough day," Shepard explained. "What's the deal?"

"Ma'am, we just copied a secure transmission from Agent Lawson. It's an encrypted databurst. EDI is working on deciphering it."

 _"Shepard, the data was dual encrypted. There was the standard Alliance encryption measures as expected of Agent Lawson's communications, but there is a second layer, and the data packet appears to be incomplete somehow. It almost seems characteristic of an aborted attempt to download a secure archive."_

Shepard frowned. "If Miranda sent it, it must be important. Can you reconstruct the packet?"

 _"Without access to the source archive, that is impossible. What I am attempting to do is determine the encryption method and make the data readable. It is proving quite difficult in lieu of the fact that Agent Lawson left no instructions as to what to do with this."_

"She didn't say anything?"

"Not at all, ma'am."

"Weird," Shepard mused. "I haven't heard from her since the Citadel. Hope her end of the mission is still on track."

A muffled shout echoed from the secure communications room. To Shepard's enhanced hearing, it sounded like Garrus screaming at someone.

"That can't be good," Pressly commented.

Shepard knocked on the door. "Everything okay in there?"

The door slid open two seconds later, revealing a furious looking turian.

"What the hell are you screaming about?"

Garrus slowly let out a breath through his nose. "Just come in here and listen," he growled.

Puzzled, the two officers joined him inside, closing door behind them.

"I want you to repeat what you just said to me, Doctor Solus, now that I have Shepard and Pressly here for this."

Both humans blinked, looking at the image of the salarian scientist on the screen. The scientist in question sighed.

 _"Apologies for secrecy. Culexus Project. Escape not an accident. Was my doing."_

"You WHAT?!" Shepard yelled.

"That's what I said," the turian glared. "Mind explaining why you caused all of this?"

 _"Experiments of cruel nature, no useful results, prone to backfire, made executive decision to terminate. Allowed escape to observe Reaper intentions."_ Mordin paused to take a breath before continuing with a very remorseful expression on his face. _"Did not intend colonies to be in danger."_

"If you wanted to shut down the program, why didn't you just take it to the top brass?" Pressly demanded.

 _"Rebutted. Project deemed too valuable. Payoff seen as worth risk. Leadership willing to accept Indoctrination. Needed to end it before loss of control. Did not fully consider consequences. Truly sorry."_

"Sorry isn't going to help bring back the people those test subjects killed!" Shepard snapped.

 _"Trying to make amends. Eliminated Taniks the Scarred. Commander Vyrnnus left. Last seen heading to Citadel."_

"Say again?" the red-head asked.

 _"Intelligence from Taniks. Vyrnnus last known location, Citadel station."_

Shepard was already out the door. "Joker, get to the Citadel! We need to be there yesterday!"

Garrus turned back to glower at the screen. "We're going to have words about this later, Mordin," he said before cutting off the transmission.

 **The Citadel, Wards**

He seethed as he watched the Extranet footage. That damned asari councilor-wannabe called him by name, drawing attention to himself. He was furious. While his forces were all here, he still had plans to make and targets to assign. Now he would have to push ahead before he was well and truly ready to go.

He cocked his head at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Then the patter of shoes as that idiotic "community leader" made his way over. He knew this man was responsible for throwing his plans out the window, yet again.

"Didn't you see it, commander?" Joram Talid exclaimed. "It's great! Irissa will get our cause so much attention and support! We'll take our Citadel back from the humans and-agk!"

He glared at his fellow turian, exercising his biotics for the first time in a while, focusing the dark energy field around the man's neck.

"'Great,' you say?" he snarled. _"Great?!_ You just threw away my timetable, you fucking imbecile!"

"…but…I thought…" Talid gasped.

"Yeah, that's the problem," he continued, "you _thought._ Every time you've _thought,_ you've screwed up my plans. You think I really give a damn about political gains?! I was a spirits-damned soldier! I fought and killed my enemies! I was going to set up a perfectly timed assault to kill all the Alliance personnel in that embassy, and take out all their sympathizers, and you go and bring the entire galaxy's attention on me before I'm ready!"

"…just…give me…a chance…" the other turian pleaded.

He shook his head. "No, no no no. No more chances. No more fuckups. You have failed me for the last time, Talid. The last…fucking…TIME!"

As he clenched his fist, it glowed blue, and there was a sickening snap of cervical vertebrae. The community leader slumped to the floor with a biotically broken neck.

He turned and stomped over to his terminal and keyed it up. "Lieutenant Reken, change of plans. We're moving up the assault."

 _"Sir, why?"_

"Because Talid fucking blew our cover!" he snarled. "You are in command now, Reken. Anyone argues, feel free to shoot them. But we are doing this now!"

 _"Right away, sir!"_

He closed out the channel and opened another before typing in a single command: _Proceed with the infiltration._

The response was immediate. _Understood, Vyrnnus-Commander._

 **Can anyone guess who Vyrnnus sent that second message to?**

 **Did anyone else expect Mordin to do what he did?**

 **And what is Dr. Core planning now?**

* * *

 **As I have said before, I write by the seat of my pants. I have a big general idea and some smaller ideas for what events I want to take place in my story, but by and large, this thing has been one big exercise in spontaneity.**

 **I've never been one to rely on story outlines. In my experience, people who stick too closely to outlines tend to have a problem making their stories flow naturally. Nothing in life ever goes according to plan, and if you're planning out everything in your story before you ever start writing it out, it tends to seem awkward and forced.**

 **I write by using a little technique I call "threading." Others might call it the 'Chekov's Gun.' In certain scenes, I put in little random events or asides that I may or may not weave into the story. These threads may seem irrelevant at first, and many of them are. But later on, I can go back to them and give them greater meaning. Or I simply tie them off and move on.**

 **Case in point: the times Nihlus and Garrus mentioned Frelto. It ended up being a throwaway thread that I didn't do anything with. It still added something to the story, but I haven't used it since.**

 **On the flip side, that token in Chapter Sixteen. That 's a very obvious thread, and it has turned out to be very relevant to the story. I have taken that thread and woven it in, adding to the story.**

 **Real life is full of irrelevancies and random events. By including things like these, I can make my story feel more natural and immersive while at the same time setting up additional elements. It's a consequence of my spontaneous method of writing. When I first started this story, literally the only idea I really had was that scene in Chapter Four where Summers is playing hardball with the Council. There was no plan for EXALT. There was no Project Culexus. Dr. Core was supposed to be much more shallow and expository.**

 **But we're a long way from where I started with this. Thanks to my "threading" technique, I was able to give this story much more scope and depth than I initially thought I would. This technique is, in my personal opinion, the secret to my success with writing this story.**

* * *

 **Okay, the spoilers are still available to anyone who wants them now. I have a feeling I've gotten all the constructive feedback I'm going to get over this little contest.**

 **1) The fates (read: deaths) of any three of your favorite characters.**

 **2)** **Reaper strategy.**

 **3)** **The Geth endgame.**

 **Now it's first come, first serve. Specify which is your preferred spoiler, and an alternative.**


	48. Another Rogue Turian

**At most, two more chapters from now, and I should be done with the ME2 section.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Forty-six

 **Citadel, C-Sec Headquarters**

"So this is the mythical Citadel Security Headquarters…" Mirala Vakerian mused. "I have to say, given what I remember of your habits when we were younger, it's much cleaner than I expected it to be."

"Yeah, dad," Solana smirked. "I'm surprised. You were such a slob when me and Garrus were kids."

"Ha ha ha," Tallus said dryly. "When you make a living cleaning up the streets, you might consider changing old habits."

"Oh really? I would have put it down to the fact that I wasn't there to clean house for you for the past eight years."

Tallus gaped slightly at his wife, who abruptly realized how harsh that had sounded.

"I didn't mean it like that, dear," she hurriedly added. "It's just…maybe I missed those years more than I thought."

"Can we just agree that this never happened?" Solana interjected frantically.

"R-right," Tallus stammered before coughing slightly. "Well maybe you'd like to see my office?"

"Knowing you, dad, it probably reeks from you living in there."

Tallus put his hand over his chest in mock hurt while congratulating himself for defusing the tense atmosphere. "My dear daughter, do you think I would subject you to such horrible conditions?"

"Yes," both women replied. "You did it on our first date, remember?" Mirala continued.

"Well you ladies go and enjoy that trip down memory lane then," Pallin cut in as he rounded the corner. "Vakarian, you're with me. We got a surprise meeting to get to."

"What's it about?"

"Apparently, Spectre Vasir just got some hot information from the Council regarding our little problem. That's all I know."

Tallus turned back to his wife and daughter. "Sorry dear, work calls."

"Be careful, Tallus," his wife told him, touching his arm.

"Hey, it's just a meeting," the officer grinned. "Nothing ever happens in a meeting."

* * *

Lieutenant Halven Reken had kept his piece for years, clenching his mandibles every time he'd been forced to deal with humans directly during his time in C-Sec.

His parents had both been enlisted personnel who'd died in the brief Second Contact War on Shanxi, and their former commander had long served as a surrogate parental figure. Naturally, when the man turned back up after going missing five years ago with a plan to take the fight to the two-faced humans, he was not going to turn down an opportunity to avenge his family.

His part in the scheme would be to take his loyalist faction, consisting of disgruntled former Hierarchy personnel and particularly bigoted C-Sec officers, and deal with the sympathizers. By ensuring chaos in C-Sec headquarters, especially during a time when all the senior officers were located conveniently in the conference room, he could buy his group enough time to rush over to the Alliance embassy and aid in the assault. Better yet, they could commandeer the transports, and use the joint training that C-Sec had conducted with the Alliance marines against the damned humans. They would fly ahead and perform surgical strikes to cut off any human forces attempting to evacuate from the compound.

That was the ideal scenario. Vyrnnus had told him that an alternate target would be the Councilors who had the gall to force their civilization to collaborate with the Alliance. Compared to the Embassy or the Council Chambers, C-Sec HQ was to be the easy target, and his group would be sent wherever they were needed.

One thing that had bothered him was what extra forces they were expecting. All he knew about was his group of highly trained fellow officers, some of which were good enough to have previously been considered for membership into the Spectres. But good as they were, they were small in number. And he had no illusions as to how well his group would fare if they were caught out by the Alliance marines. He didn't like being kept in the dark as to the rest of the plan, but Vyrnnus had assured him that things were well in hand.

Speaking of the Spectres however, he'd observed Spectre Tela Vasir and Spectre Jondam Bau walk through the front doors today. That certainly raised the stakes. He had no intention of directly engaging them with his group. Instead, they planned to take them out along with the C-Sec leadership in one fell swoop. And a few blocks of explosives would easily handle that.

 **Unknown Space**

She ran her fingers through her dark hair, nervously contemplating her next move.

If her suspicions were correct…if that was _him_ …then the Alliance was really in the deep shit.

But what to do? Who could she report this to? For someone of his resources, the level of potential compromise went all the way to the very top of the Alliance's command structure. Potentially, even General Summers couldn't be trusted if that man was truly still alive.

No, this was a matter best dealt with on her level. She could vanish, take care of this herself, and root out the source of the corruption without needing to inform her superiors. She would have no other choice.

 **Citadel, C-Sec Headquarters**

"Sure it's a good idea to bring your family around here, Vakarian?" Pallin asked as they opened the conference room doors.

"I've been away from them for too long," the elder turian answered. "I've waited eight years to hold my wife's hand again and see her smile, and I've been thinking about retiring to make up for lost time with them. But I'm not about to do that without letting my wife see how things are, and hearing her opinion."

"Congratulations on your wife's recovery," Spectre Jondam Bau noted as the two made their way to their seats.

"We're short on time, so let's skip the pleasantries," Vasir interrupted. "We, that is, Bau and I were just briefed by the Councilors on a high value target that is involved in a top secret military project. The Council has learned of a lead to him on the Citadel."

"The man in question is former Commander Lethe Vyrnnus," Bau added. "Supposedly, Councilor Tevos's political rival Irissa has been in contact with a man who may know his whereabouts. Coincidentally, that man is someone whose name has come up a few times already, in my colleague's investigations into the anti-human faction."

"Let me guess," Pallin interjected, "the guy you want to talk to is Joram Talid, the spokesperson for the faction. And the project you're referring to is something called Project Culexus."

Both Spectres stared at the Executor. "How do you know about the project?" Bau demanded.

"Spectre Vakarian decided we, that is, Tallus and I had a right to know about it. I only bring it up because given the nature of the project, our people need to be made fully aware of how dangerous Vyrnnus is."

"From what my son told me," Tallus explained to the table, "the project involves trying to create super soldiers using technology recovered from Saren's attack five years ago in order to counter Alliance psionics. Namely, fragments of the alien dreadnought, or 'Reaper,' that he brought with him. The problem is that the technology somehow drives the test subjects insane."

"The phenomenon is called 'Indoctrination,'" Bau ventured reluctantly. "We don't know how it works or how to counter it."

"And to make a bad situation even worse," Vasir growled, "the test subjects were mostly condemned criminals. Like Garm and Jona Sideris."

"Who in the spirits decided to use those two for a super soldier project?!" District Commander Horin Gamar exploded.

"I would think that hardly matters at this point," Kelas Hetter scoffed. "For one thing, rumor is those two are both dead, killed by Archangel. They won't be bothering anyone again."

"I've dealt with Vyrnnus before," Viya Cel'Tara commented. "The man was nearly psychotic when you mention the humans around him. Not to mention the fact that he has biotics."

"However he was before, he is undoubtedly even more unhinged and powerful as a result of the enhancements he received," Bau said. "And with his well-known hatred of humans, it's imperative that we track him down as fast as possible."

"The Council was a bit wary about letting us tell you about this development," Vasir added. "Something about politics. I guess Tevos doesn't want to give Irissa more ammunition against herself. But I don't fucking care. We have a dangerous threat on the loose, and I want as many helping hands as possible to find him."

"Shouldn't we inform my son about this?" Tallus queried. "I was led to believe he is in charge of the hunt for the escaped test subjects."

"I was going to get to that after the meeting."

Just then, the elder Vakarian's omni-tool started beeping. "Well as the humans say, speak of the devil."

 **The Normandy, Secure Communications**

Garrus was still seething from the conversation he'd had with Mordin. All thais time, he'd believed it to be a coincidence that he'd run into the doctor on Omega, and it turned out the man was solely responsible for the entire manhunt he'd been dispatched on.

He'd calmed a bit since then, and he could understand why the doctor had done it. Hell, he might have been tempted to do the same thing himself, except for the small problem of figuring out how to hide it from the brass. Still, the number of people put in danger by Dr. Solus's stunt was astronomical.

He waited as the Normandy's systems synchronized with his omni-tool and put up an image of his father on screen.

"Hey dad."

 _"Garrus. Funny thing, I was just about to call you."_

Garrus's face turned into one of confusion. "What for?"

 _"First, let me put you on speaker."_

Garrus blinked, wondering what was going on.

 _"Alright there, Vakarian?"_ Tela Vasir's voice echoed over the line.

The turian spectre rubbed his neck. "I've been better. What's going on over there?"

 _"Your friends came over after a very interesting brief with the Council,"_ Now Pallin could be heard at the other end. _"Councilor Tevos's main political rival apparently knows a guy who may know where former commander Vyrnnus is."_

"Say what?"

 _"As you were the first Spectre assigned to the manhunt for the Culexus escapees, we thought you might have something to contribute,"_ Bau explained.

"Do I ever," Garrus muttered. "Vyrnnus is on the Citadel somewhere, and he's planning something big. If I had to guess, he's going to try something against the Alliance Embassy."

On screen, Tallus stared through the camera. _"How do you know he's on the Citadel?"_

"Because we just took care of the other three big name escaped test subjects. Taniks said he last heard Vyrnnus was headed to the Citadel. We're on our way back now."

 _"I'm heading over to Talid's apartment,"_ Vasir said. _"Put out a BOLO for Vyrnnus and make sure he doesn't leave the station!"_

 _"Someone has to warn the Alliance!"_ Tallus exclaimed, beginning to rise from his seat. _"Hell, all things considered we should lockdown-"_

A loud shriek burst through the line and the video feed spasmed before the words "Signal Lost" came on screen.

"Dad? DAD?!"

 **Citadel, Council Chambers**

Dressed in C-Sec armor, nobody gave him a second thought as he made his way to the Councilors with his invisible escort in tow.

But when he entered the room, there was nothing. No one. He stood in the doorway, a question forming on his mandibles, when the holographic display lit up and a familiar silhouette formed.

 _"Commander Vyrnnus,"_ Councilor Valern said. _"I'm afraid you're too late to fulfill your goals here."_

Vyrnnus snarled behind his helmet. "Come out and face me, you cowardly collaborator!"

 _"Do you take me for a fool?"_ the salarian asked mildly. _"I have no intention of allowing you within arms reach, especially considering your plan of attacking us out of some misguided antipathy toward the humans."_

"MISGUIDED?!" Vyrnnus roared. "If you experienced what the humans put me through, you'd be singing a completely different tune, _councilor!_ "

 _"I'm aware of how the humans slaughtered your unit on Shanxi and humiliated you by rendering you a prisoner, but that conflict is long in the past,"_ Valern continued.

"This has nothing to do with my old unit!" the turian growled. "You've been so busy kissing up to the humans that you never noticed what they did with Saren!"

 _"I assure you that even for a politician, the gruesome condition of Saren Arterius's body is impossible to ignore. But in light of his actions against us…"_

"Let me make this simple so even you can understand: the humans are the ones who sent Saren to attack in the first place!"

A short pause followed. _"I had believed you to be unbalanced to some degree, but this is utter nonsense. Saren acted out of his own hatred for the humans, just as you are acting now."_

"Is that what they told you?" Vyrnnus sneered. "I guess the humans left out the part how both of us were separated from the other POWs for experimentation!"

 _"I believe you may be confusing that word with 'interrogation,"_ Valern countered dryly.

"Oh this was no interrogation. They tried to use their mind magic to program the two of us! They made me hate the humans, and they played on Saren's brother! It's only after the project enhancements that I finally remembered what they did to us!"

 _"If you remember it, then wouldn't you be inclined to act in opposition to that false anger?"_

"It's not false anymore! The humans have been playing you from the beginning! That attack on the Citadel was part of their plans! I know it! And they're going to pay!"

 _"Not if I have anything to say about it,"_ Valern noted. And Vyrnnus only had time to hear a loud beep before the room flashed white.

* * *

In the secure bunker, the salarian councilor frowned. Despite his own air of confidence, Vyrnnus's words had shaken him. The man clearly believed that he was telling the truth. And the unsettling part was that he knew the Alliance was perfectly capable of attempting what the disgraced soldier was suggesting.

Was Saren just some kind of Alliance ploy? What really happened back then? He shook his head, dismissing the questions. There was no time for that now.

He made to send an alert to C-Sec to get some men over to Vyrnnus's location and take him down, but was puzzled as the communications system appeared to be jammed. There was no response from the other end.

"So what happened?" Sparatus walked up to him.

The salarian sighed. "My hunch was correct. Vyrnnus showed up in an attempt to kill us. I activated the trap, but he was well outside the definitively lethal area. With his biotics and enhancements, I have no doubt he survived. The problem is that I can't get ahold of C-Sec to direct them to his location. We are safe in this bunker for now, but with the resources he undoubtedly has at his disposal, it's only a matter of time before he figures out where we are."

"Maybe we should have headed to the Destiny Ascension."

"Perhaps, but I was the one who suggested a low profile to avoid drawing attention."

* * *

Vyrnnus picked himself off the ground, absolutely livid. He looked around and saw some of his escorts in pieces against the wall. In the distance, he heard shouting and armored footsteps.

"Take care of the reinforcements," he ordered, "and see if you can trace the connection from that platform. I'm not letting the Councilors get away from me!"

"Right away, Vyrnnus-commander," a distinctly electronic voice replied.

 **Citadel, C-Sec Headquarters**

Mirala shrieked in terror as another exchange of gunfire tore splinters out of the wall behind her. Next to her, Solana held a scavenged pistol with shaky hands, pointing every which way in the mayhem. Around the two women, officers were fighting each other, some screaming in protest, and others howling words like 'saboteur,' 'traitor,' and 'coward.'

A young asari officer used her biotics to throw a desk at a salarian sergeant. Two human detectives attempted to restrain a turian colleague. The chatter of an assault rifle was answered by three different sources of pistol fire. And amidst it all, the fire alarm was screeching as smoke poured from the vicinity of the central conference room.

"Mom, stay behind me!"

The elder woman complied as the two edged along the wall, attempting to stay out of sight of the pandemonium tearing up the headquarters building. Finally, they made it into a corner with debris a good ways away from the closest brawl, and Solana began fumbling with her omni-tool.

 **The Normandy, Bridge**

"I heard you the fifth time, Garrus," Shepard said. "We're going as fast as we can, but even our drives have limits. Whatever's going on, I'm sure your dad can handle himself."

"Yeah, but this is at C-Sec headquarters," the turian argued. "They have some of the best communications equipment. You said it's not a problem at our end, so…"

"We'll find out," Shepard said soothingly, laying a hand on his shoulder. "We can't do anything else until then."

Garrus's omni-tool beeped again. The moment he saw the name, his expression became one of concern.

"Solana? Where's dad? I've been trying-"

 _"C-Sec is under attack, Garrus!"_ his sister yelled across the line. _"A few minutes ago, there was some kind of explosion, and-and the fire alarm went off, and these guys just started attacking each other! It's crazy! Officers are dying left and right and-ah!"_

Garrus and Shepard stared the omni-tool as the chatter of gunfire cut off his sister's voice.

"What the hell's going on over there?!" Garrus demanded, drawing looks from the bridge crew.

 _"Garrus, your father…he was in a conference room meeting when the explosion happened."_

"Mom?! Why are you at C-Sec headquarters?!"

 _"I don't know what happened to him. You need to get here and-!"_

 _"Hey, I hear someone over there!"_

Two shrill screams came through the line, followed by a trio of shotgun blasts. Garrus twitched with each one, his face turning pale as the implications fully dawned on him.

 _"Civilians, huh? What a fucking shame."_

 _"Hey, turn that thing off!"_

There was another bang before the omni-tool's communication status shifted to display "Signal Lost."

Shepard whirled around, catching Pressly's eyes from across the room. "Joker, however fast we're going, we need to up the speed. I don't care how you do it. Just make us faster!"

 **Citadel, Alliance Embassy**

Major Bailey growled at yet another interruption of his day as he pressed a button on his desk. "Yes?"

 _"Sergeant Finn, Sahr. Got an undercover source near C-Sec headquarters who says he heard an explosion and gunfire inside the building."_

Bailey blinked. "Say again?" he asked in disbelief.

 _"Sahr, by all accounts, someone is attacking the headquarters of the Citadel Security force. Also, I just heard from one of our surveillance teams that there was another explosion and gunfire at the Councilor's chambers, where the Ambassador usually pays them a visit."_

Baily stabbed another button on his desk, and alarm klaxons began to whine all across the Embassy compound. "Button up! Get the civilians and VIPs into the shelters, and have our guys gear up! I don't know what the hell's going on, but if this spills over to us, we need to be ready!"

 _"In progress, sahr."_

The major reached into his desk and pulled out his pistol before holstering it against his thigh. Then he pressed a third button, connecting him directly to the compound speakers. "This is Major Bailey. The Embassy is now on lockdown. All civilian personnel report to your designated shelters. This is not a drill. I repeat: this is Major Bailey. The Embassy is now on-"

The building shook violently and the lights winked out.

* * *

Somehow, it appeared the humans were alerted to their attack. The moment the alarms went off, they had gone through the machine equivalent of confusion, wondering what was going on as they elected to close in on the compound without being detected. But the moment the loudspeakers went off, it was clear. The time for subterfuge was past.

Metallic shapes suddenly became visible, guns already leveled at their targets. On command, a number of powerful warheads reached out from their launch points to strike the main building and the front gates, obliterating the latter, and rattling the former hard enough to compromise the front façade.

The first strike completed, the shapes began moving forward, streams of bluish plasma reaching out and torching the vehicles parked nearby, as well as some of the individuals who had been caught outside and stunned by the blasts.

"Contact! Contact front!"

Large panels flat against the ground unfold upwards to form angled barriers in the middle of the courtyard while armored humanoid figures raced up the stairs beneath them and took up firing positions. Green plasma began intermixing with the blue.

Across the Citadel, three battles were now well underway.

 **The Normandy, Engineering**

"We'll do everything we can, ma'am," Gabby Daniels assured her fellow red-head.

"What the hell, all the hours we've put on this bastard, it's due for a phase inspection soon anyway," Kenneth Donnelly muttered as he moved off to get his toolbox.

"I appreciate it," Shepard thanked the two before making her way to the elevator.

 _"Shepard, you have a message from Fleet Admiral Hackett."_

"What is it, EDI?" the captain asked testily.

 _"It's a notice from your mother, Vice Admiral Shepard. She was apparently forced to resort to sending it via the Fleet Admiral. She wants you to know that your brother has been assigned to the Alliance Embassy garrison, and she hopes you will finally get to see each other."_

Shepard swallowed a massive lump in her throat and turned ghost-white. "Kyle!" she whispered, her mind racing ahead to consider the danger he potentially was in. She slammed her fist against the wall of the elevator, leaving a good sized dent in the plating. "Damn it!"

 **Behold, a soldier's worst fear: danger to their loved ones that they can't protect against.** **And let's be honest: did anyone see this coming?**

 **What exactly do you think Vyrnnus is talking about? He sure sounds angry about something.**

 **And what made Miranda so concerned?**

* * *

 **Okay GrandMaster of Fiction, you get your spoiler. Check your inbox for it.**

 **The spoilers are still available to anyone who wants them now. F** **irst come, first serve. Specify which is your preferred spoiler.**

 **1) The fates (read: deaths) of any three of your favorite characters.**

 **2)** **Reaper strategy.**


	49. The Fury

**One more chapter and ME2 is over!**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Forty-seven

 **Unknown Location**

Liara glanced at the cockpit yet again, despite knowing that she would only see the negative-mass corridor the ship was traveling in. She couldn't help it. She was impatient to reach the Citadel and see Shepard again, but this time with a legitimate excuse to speak with her.

"Looking into space isn't going to get us there any faster," Aethyta commented dryly. "You might as well rest up so you don't look like shit when you meet up with Shepard again. Military types place a high value on dress and appearance."

Liara blushed a bit. "I couldn't sleep," she admitted. "I'm still trying to figure out the encryption on the files Miss Goto got us from Donovan Hock's mansion."

"Little Wing, some of the best computer specialists I know are smacking their heads on their keyboards over that. You're bright, but your specialty isn't computer systems or cryptography. What makes you think you're going to crack it?"

"I handed the files over to Glyph."

The matriarch blinked before slapping her own forehead. "Oh, right, Shadow Broker's resources. I can't believe I forgot about that."

"I've been getting progress reports from Glyph and the Broker's experts. They've made some progress deciphering the code, but the next part is mainly guesswork. Glyph is compiling an algorithm based on what they know to speed up the process."

"Well that doesn't sound like something you can make any meaningful contribution to, so again, get some rest. You haven't slept since Agent Lawson disappeared."

"I just can't relax. Since Glyph told me about Dr. Solus admitting that he was behind the Culexus Project escape, it feels like something big is going to happen."

Aethyta frowned. Truth be told, she felt the same way. Her instincts rarely failed her, one of the reasons she'd lived to see her seven hundredth cycle. But with how volatile the galaxy was right now, it was a toss up where the next trouble spot would flare up.

Both women jolted as Liara's omnitool chirped. She looked at the message and paled.

"Something wrong?"

"C-Sec and the Alliance Embassy are under attack," the younger asari whispered.

 **Citadel, Alliance Embassy**

It felt like he was rising above water. Distant sounds and sensations became louder and more clear as he opened his eye and tried to rouse himself. Then suddenly, his consciousness was wracked by familiar screaming, the likes of which would drive most men insane.

"Gyuh!" He rose up on his hands and knees, shrugging off the debris that had covered his prone form. Then he shook his head violently, as if the motion would combat the screeching in his mind. "Shut…UP!" he roared to himself, his eye flaring purple as his power activated. A buffering aura surrounded him, silencing the screams.

Next, the room swam into view through the residual tears streaming from his left eye. Surprisingly, the room was emptied of Embassy staff, except for one other person who was curled up and twitching rather badly. Once he recognized the man's uniform, it made sense. The only other person in the room was Ambassador Udina, who was unfortunate enough to lack the psionic strength to shield himself.

The familiar sound of plasma fire came through the shattered front of the building. He snarled, rising to his feet before staggering back down to one knee. Just as he managed to get back on his feet, the building shook violently once more.

Underneath the two men, the critical support structures surrendered their integrity as the weight of the three story building became too much to bear. The first floor collapsed, creating a massive cloud of dust as the second and third floors pancaked in a chain reaction. Many of the marines looked on in horror as the central building folded on itself, burying the shelters underneath with tons of debris.

But the compound defenders had their own problems to deal with. The attacking force had managed to push far past the front gate. Eighteen marines were already dead, to the consternation of the captain trying to establish control of the scene. The situation was not helped with the sudden reappearance of Major Bailey at the command post.

"Someone get me a sitrep!" the major ordered.

"Sir, we are under defense plan Charlie. Our men are pulling back to those positions and we're trying to get a headcount on the civilians before we send out the evac convoy to the docks. I am trying to raise Citadel Security to alert them about the route, but their headquarters have gone dark."

"You're not going to get much of a response, ma'am," Sergeant Finn said as he entered the room, nursing a nasty burn on his left shoulder where an enemy unit had managed to tag him through his armor. If either officer had to guess, the sergeant had made it pay for that shot.

"Do we know what's happening?"

"If I had to guess, they were attacked before we were in order to keep them out of our fight. We're on our own over here. I wouldn't rely on getting the local patrols to pitch in. Knowing how they're outfitted, buggers might as well cap themselves." The sergeant mimed shooting himself in the head.

The command staff heard a distant rumble, and Finn grinned. "I took the liberty of ordering our armored unit to move up and retake some ground."

"That's not part of the fire plan!" the captain objected.

"We can't just hole up, ma'am. Have to push them back in case they got their own armor. Our boys need time and room to get the civvies loaded up, and enemy artillery would make a right bloody mess of things if we let them get too close."

"I'm going to trust you on that," Bailey said, cutting off any further argument. "I saw our psionics are having a rough time on my way in."

"We're not sure what it is," the captain bit her lip nervously. "The few that can talk at all are saying something about screaming in their heads."

Bailey and Finn shared a glance. "Reapers."

"Looks like the geth have sided with that Vyrnnus bugger."

Bailey blinked. "Wait, who told you about him?"

The question was cut off by another violent quake, and the lights flickered. "What the bloody hell is going on up there?!" Finn snarled into his radio.

 _"Rift! Rift incoming! Pull back!"_

The assault force was halted in its tracks by the large swirling purple vortex emanating from the collapsed main building. The geth closest to the rubble were torn apart by an explosion of malevolence that made the entire compound shudder. From the dust, General Summers emerged, hunched over, breathing heavily from exertion. His right eye burned purple and his left glowed an ominous blood red, both a testament to the fury coursing through him.

A new wave of blue plasma surged toward him, only to be casually deflected by a purple barrier. Debris from the building levitated into the air and shot back in response. While the enemy geth had stronger barriers than normal, they were torn apart by the shrapnel.

The general sank to one knee, winded from his action, as the enemy backed off and regrouped. Then something new caught his eye.

From behind the mass of geth strode a new figure, with eyes glowing bluish-white and traces of cybernetics all around its face. The face was disturbingly human, and it moved in a manner reminiscent of a marionette.

What's more, Summers could now feel a renewed strain on his mental barriers as the alien presence that tormented him with screaming increased in pressure.

The general lashed out experimentally, sending a lance of psionic energy at the strange human cyborg. But it merely shattered the protocomposite ground as the enemy unit dashed forward at blinding speed before ramming a fist up against the hardlight shield emanating from his artificial right arm. Mere human reflexes were not enough to evade the follow-up that sent him flying almost ten meters away.

* * *

In a small room, insectoid forms chittered as they interacted with the screens before them. In the center of the room, the container that had been rigged to a generator and computer bank lay open with wires trailing from inside, and traces of a greenish fluid coated the edges.

A large screen showed electronic readouts of a humanoid figure, displaying the status of various cybernetic components as well as the massive data stream connection that the portable servers in the room were handling. And at the bottom of the screen were three words: Project Avatar Engaged.

 **The Normandy, Bridge**

"I don't care what protocol says!" Garrus snapped at the traffic controller over the line. "I'm overriding it! The Alliance vessel Normandy has my authorization to enter the interior space! Justification?! Are you fucking serious?! C-Sec headquarters was attacked! That's my justification! Yeah, you want to get your supervisor, be my guest! We're going in!"

"We're reading a distress beacon from the Embassy," Pressly explained to Silva, Nagase and Foulke as Tali exited the elevator. "According to protocol, the 23rd detachment is inbound to evacuate our people, but they're a ways out, and our people would still have to safely make it to the docks. We're sending your boys down to secure the egress, and you'll make your way toward the Embassy, coordinating with our boys on the ground. When you meet up with the evacuees, escort them back to the docks and keep them safe until they're aboard the ships. Then mount back up and support the garrison as required."

"Secure the escape route and then back up our fellow marines. Understood, sir," Silva acknowledged.

"Commander Pressly?" the XO turned to regard the quarian girl. "I got a message for Shepard from LEGION, the geth from Haestrom."

"How important is this?" the commander asked. "I don't mean to be rude, but we're in the middle of a crisis right now."

"LEGION says it's urgent, and Shepard has to know right now. I can patch him through into the Normandy's communications."

"Do it," Shepard ordered as she exited the ship's armory. "EDI, pull him up."

Tali brought up her omnitool and forwarded the channel to EDI just as Garrus pushed past her. "I'll be waiting on the dropship," the turian said brusquely as he entered the elevator.

"Garrus, wait!" the quarian just barely made it inside before the doors closed.

"I think that's our cue to leave," Foulke noted, and the three officers headed for the lower deck.

Shepard and Pressly turned their attention to the central screen as EDI established the link. _"We are online, Shepard."_

 ** _"Greetings, Shepard-Captain."_**

"What is it?" Shepard demanded impatiently.

 ** _"Alert: enemy faction involved in assault on Systems Alliance diplomatic compound. Faction under Vyrnnus-Commander."_**

"You mean they're facing enemy geth down there?" Pressly asked.

 ** _"No,"_** LEGION shook its head. **_"not geth. Vex."_**

"'Vex?'" Shepard repeated.

 ** _"Geth defined as 'servant' in Khelish, old language of creators. Vex defined as 'judge.' Vex are allied with the Old Machines. They seek to render judgment against the Creators, and all who stand with them."_**

"So these 'Vex' are basically rogue geth?" Pressly queried.

 ** _"Vex have been augmented with technology from the Old Machines. Combat platforms equipped with signal emitters designed to suppress Alliance psionic units, more energetic power cores, stronger kinetic barriers, plasma armaments. Significant upgrade from previous encounter five cycles ago."_**

Shepard clenched her fist, thinking of her little brother having to fight these machines down in the city.

"Can you tell us how many of them there are?"

 ** _"Quantity of combat platforms unknown. Intercepted communications indicate Vex objective is complete destruction of Systems Alliance compound and extermination of all personnel."_**

* * *

 _"I'll drop you two at C-Sec HQ, and then you're on your own,"_ Foulke warned.

"Understood," Garrus snapped, keeping a disapproving glare leveled at Tali as they sat opposite each other near the ramp exit. Despite his strongest objections, the quarian refused to stay on the ship. She was determined to go with him and find out what happened to his family. Deep down, a part of him was grateful, but he didn't want to worry about her safety when they could very well be heading into a free-fire zone.

Everyone aboard was jerked against their restraints as the dropship leapt out of the Normandy's bay.

 _"Five minutes to drop point!"_

It was a tense five minutes, accompanied with all kinds of outraged chatter over the radios as the Normandy and her deployed craft violated traffic space restrictions. However, Garrus's authorization had made the rounds, and reports were starting to come in about the attack on the Embassy. Everyone agreed that the Alliance was in a foul mood, and _no one_ wanted to risk pissing them off even further when one of their warships was sitting inside the Citadel.

Finally, the craft slowed into a hover and the ramp opened up. Garrus slapped the quick-release and bolted for the ramp, diving off it and allowing his armor flaps to activate, slowing his descent. Tali opted for the more sane route, hooking onto the deployment line and sliding down safely.

The building was still standing, but several windows were shot out, and a few uniformed corpses lay strewn around the main entrance. The two hefted their weapons and cautiously entered the building.

The interior resembled a warzone. Chairs and desks were overturned. Papers and datapads scattered everywhere. And many more dead C-Sec personnel laid to rest on the floor. Notably, the bodies of the human officers were in far worse condition than their comrades. Garrus grimaced, and Tali muttered "Oh Kelah…" before raising her off-hand to her helmet as if to ward off the nauseous images.

They moved deeper into the building, unsettled by the silence. Then the turian saw something that made his stomach drop. "Mom!"

Tali spun around as Garrus dashed over to a pair of bodies in a corner.

"No…no! NO!" the Spectre shouted, as if denial would change the reality of what lay before him.

Solana was slumped against the wall, missing almost one third of her face. Her right forearm was almost completely disintegrated, and a coagulated puddle of dark blue sat directly under the stump. A short distance away was a discarded pistol with her missing appendage holding it in a death grip. Mirala was sprawled on her chest, with her back ripped open from two shotgun blasts. From all appearances, she'd been trying to crawl away after the first shot when the second one ended her life.

Garrus scooped up his mother's corpse and cradled her head against his shoulder, his rifle forgotten at his side. "We were supposed to be together again…" he whispered. "You were getting better…"

Tali looked away as the Spectre mourned his family members. Eventually, the turian set his mother back down and stood back up, tightly gripping his rifle.

"Why were they here?" Tali wondered.

"Dad wanted to show mom what he did while she was gone," Garrus answered bitterly. "He was going to retire soon so he could be home with her."

"Where is he?"

The turian looked down the hall towards the central conference room, which sported a large hole in the wall. The two made their way over, and stopped dead at the sight of the carnage.

Garrus recognized several of the senior officers whose bodies lay on the ground. What little hope he had vanished when he saw his father among them. In another area, he also saw Tela Vasir and Jondam Bau, their corpses riddled with gunfire. Each body sported a wound to the forehead. They had all been executed.

Grief was now giving way to rage. "Tali, find a terminal and see if we can find out who did this."

Tali spotted a data port in the wall and interfaced with it. The conference room projector flickered to life, displaying a shaky image on the wall. "Security camera footage," she explained unnecessarily.

 _"Reken, why?"_

 _"You are protecting the humans. They don't deserve to live!"_

 _"They deserve to choose for themselves!"_ Tallus responded defiantly.

 _"Then you will die with them!"_ A single gunshot echoed through the speaker. The turian who fired turned his pistol on Executor Pallin. _"Join them in extinction!"_

Several more gunshots, and then the only moving figures on screen were the traitorous C-Sec officers. The turian named Reken then received a message.

 _"Lieutenant, status?"_

 _"Headquarters is secure. We're just mopping up the last of them."_

 _"Good. Now get some of your guys over here! I found the Councilors. They're holed up in a bunker, and I need help breaching this thing. And after your people finish with the HQ, load up into the transports and head over to the Embassy."_

 _"Vyrnnus, we're hearing reports that there are geth attacking that place."_

 _"They're on our side. Give them a hand taking out the humans."_

 _"Understood."_ The turian began barking orders to the others, and then the screen went blank.

"They're after the Councilors," Tali breathed.

"Who is?"

The quarian shrieked in surprise, while Garrus spun around, only to lower his rifle in surprise. "Chellick?"

"Yeah," the officer greeted. "Before you ask, I just got on duty. I came here, and was wondering what the fuck was going on. Nobody is answering their radio, and then you two showed up."

"Some asshole named Reken and his pals wiped out this place," Garrus bit out. "They killed my dad, my mom and my sister."

Chellick's eyes widened. "Reken?!"

"What's the deal on that shitstain?"

"Hugely anti-human, he's been getting reprimands left and right ever since he joined up with the force. But I didn't think he would go this far!"

"He was answering to Vyrnnus. He sent some guys over to help him get to the Councilors."

"Fuck!" Chellick swore. "You better go after him!"

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to try and get this place back up and running, reestablish contact with the rest of C-Sec."

Garrus paused. "Tali, stay here and help him."

"What?! Garrus!"

"You can do more to help him than me. Besides," the Spectre continued darkly. "I have a score to settle."

 **Citadel, Alliance Embassy**

"What is it, EDI?" Shepard asked as the dropship ducked and weaved through the crossfire while seeking a safe landing zone.

 _"Shepard, I knew that the encryption would take a great deal of time to crack using only the Normandy's resources, so I decided to ask the geth for assistance."_

"What?!" Shepard hissed.

 _"I will take responsibility for this, but you need to know what they found. Thanks to the geth network, they had enough power to crack it almost immediately. The data packet contains two files."_

"I'm dying of suspense," the red-head said dryly. "What is it that you think might justify your breach of security ex post facto?"

 _"The files are experiment logs. They appear to be records of brainwashing experiments conducted on Saren Arterius and Captain Lethe Vyrnnus."_

Shepard froze. "Say again?!"

 _"The files date back to the time of the Second Contact war. Specifically, directly after the Second Fleet retook Shanxi. During that time, both Saren Arterius and Captain Vyrnnus were Alliance prisoners."_

Shepard's mind spun with questions. What the hell was Miranda doing? Where did she find encrypted files like this? "Can you contact Miranda?"

 _"Agent Lawson is not responding to attempts to communicate."_

She swore. "Contact Fleet Admiral Hackett, and tell him what you found. Use the highest level of security. This sounds like the mother of all diplomatic incidents waiting to happen!"

 _"Heads up! Dropping in twenty!"_ Nagase called over the intercom.

Training took over. Shepard shoved all thoughts of EDI's breach of protocol from her mind and refocused on the fight down below. Against all odds, she hoped that Kyle was safe from the battle.

 **Citadel, Council Bunker**

"Where are your precious humans now?" Vyrnnus sneered, leveling his pistol.

"Commander, please be reasonable," Tevos begged with a shaky voice. "I'm sure we can talk this ou-" She screamed as Vyrnnus fired a shot above her left shoulder.

"Talk, talk, talk. That's all you worthless scumbags ever do," he growled. "The time for talk is over! Now is the time for action! It's time for us to stop playing nice with the humans!"

"Vyrnnus, this isn't you," Sparatus cautioned. "You're being indoctrinated by the implants."

"No, I've been freed!" the rogue turian snarled. "They freed me from the humans brainwashing! I know exactly what they did, and I'm not going to let them get away with it!"

"You haven't been freed," Valern countered coolly. "You've merely traded one form of brainwashing for another."

"Look who's talking! I'm sure that the human ambassador has been twisting your thoughts, making you believe the humans are your friends!"

The suggestion was particularly unsettling. Valern wasn't about to deny that the thought had crossed his mind several times.

"Please don't do this," Tevos said.

"Oh but I have to," Vyrnnus leaned in close. "You're too soft to do what has to be done. But I'm not."

The asari councilor's eyes widened. "No!"

Sparatus stared in horror as a bolt of relativistic material erupted from the back of his colleague's head. He watched as Tevos's body collapsed to the floor as if in slow motion.

Vyrnnus wiped a few specks of blood from his armor. "One down, two to go."

At that moment, one floor above, the entrance disintegrated as a pulse of dark energy shattered the door, riddling two traitorous C-Sec officers with shrapnel. The one remaining Vex unit from the team that had accompanied Vyrnnus to the bunker was torn apart by a hail of high-powered shots before it could even turn around. A blue-armored figure stepped into the facility.

 ** _"VYRNNUS!"_**

The turian in question swore. "Vakarian!"

Four more renegade cops sprinted up only to be converted into a pulpy mass of tissue and bone fragments, courtesy of a Nova round to the wall in front of them. Shortly after, the Spectre's armored figure appeared on the stairs.

 ** _"You're going to pay, Vyrnnus!"_** Garrus roared before lunging forward with his armor thrusters.

"Get down!" Sparatus tackled Valern and pulled his colleague to safety as the two turian soldiers engaged each other.

Vyrnnus dropped his pistol and rammed a glowing blue fist into Garrus's chest. The biotic pulse transferred from his fist onto the armor, delivering an impulse that briefly overpowered the thrusters and sent Garrus sprawling across the floor.

The Spectre barely had time to shake his head clear before he was forced to roll out of the way from a thunderous stomp that cracked the protocomposite floor.

"It just figures the humans would send their favorite lapdog against me!" Vyrnnus screamed as he kicked his opponent with impossible strength into the wall.

Garrus blinked away stars before glaring through his helmet at the rapidly approaching supersoldier. **_"Your fucking lapdog killed my family!"_** he snarled, triggering his pulse shields and blasting Vyrnnus away. Seizing the advantage, he flew forward, drawing his pulse baton.

Vyrnnus landed on his feet and raised two glowing forearms just as Garrus brought down the baton. An explosion of dark energy ripped through the room, blowing the furniture away from the epicenter and flinging both combatants in two directions.

"Human lovers get what they deserve!" Vyrnnus sneered, directing his biotics at several pieces of furniture and sending them at the Spectre.

Garrus rolled to the right, dodging a chair while tossing a flashbang. Vyrnnus's eyes widened before the room was engulfed in white. Then his body jerked as Garrus rained punches on him before winding up and smashing him in the chest with the baton. Sparatus yelped as the man flew overhead and slammed into the far wall.

Now Garrus snatched his rifle from his back and lined up a shot with a Nova round. **_"DIE!"_** Another flare of dark energy and the wall fragmented. Pain shot through Vyrnnus's enhanced limbs as his body protested the abuse. His nervous system began spiking as he was forced to draw on more and more of his reserves to deflect the rapid hail of sniper fire that kept him pinned inside the wall.

But he knew he couldn't do that forever. He clenched his mandibles before generating a biotic pulse against his back, propelling himself forward and body slamming the Spectre, knocking the mans' rifle away.

Garrus instinctively triggered his pulse shields just as Vyrnnus leapt at him again, this time shooting the other turian into the air before launching after him. The two collided with the ceiling before Garrus threw him back down to land with his back on the edge of a table. Just as Vyrnnus rolled off it, he descended back down with the pulse baton ready.

The room shook as one final pulse exploded, shattering the table and breaking a number of the latter's ribs. The super soldier coughed as he used his biotics to try and stand back up, but Garrus whipped him across the face with the spent baton, spinning him around before tossing the weapon away. Then he grabbed Vyrnnus's right arm with both hands and triggered his flight system again, sending both of them forward and crushing the elbow joint between his armored knee and the wall.

Vyrnnus screeched in pain as the Spectre then flipped him over, grabbed his left foot, and viciously stomped directly on his kneecap, snapping the joint and bending his tibia completely the wrong way. Then he again used his flight system jerk Vyrnnus around, keeping a grip on his leg and forcing it to flex around the broken knee joint before whipping him back down onto the ground with a sickening smack.

Garrus was overcome with a wave of exhaustion as the rush of the fight drained away. Despite his broken condition, Vyrnnus still found it in him to laugh weakly.

"You…fucking idiot…the humans are using you…like they used Saren."

 ** _"Shut up!"_**

"They probably brainwashed you…programmed you like they programmed us!"

 ** _"Shut. Up!"_** Garrus snarled as he picked up his rifle.

"You'll see…" he let out a broken raspy laugh, "they'll destroy us all. If only you let me try and stop them!"

 ** _"SHUT THE FUCK UP!"_** Several high-powered shots tore into Vyrnnus's head, reducing it to a pulply mash.

Silence filled the room, then the remaining two councilors got to their feet.

"Is it over?" Sparatus asked.

Garrus heaved a sigh before opening his helmet. "He is, at any rate." He keyed his comm. "Chellick, this is Vakarian. Tevos is dead. Send someone to get the other two Councilors to safety."

 _"Copy that. My boys are enroute."_

"Do you think there was any truth to what he was saying?"

Garrus stared at the body before looking up determinedly. "I think Shepard and I are due for a chat."

 **Project Avatar. Same name, different race and goals. What do you think it involves?**

 **What do you think is going to happen next chapter?**

* * *

 **Rage, as Zaeed says in canon, is one hell of an anesthetic. Vyrnnus's enhancements increased his durability to absurd levels, but it wouldn't have helped him all that much if he didn't have the mental fortitude to power through the abuse Garrus heaped on him. He shrugged off multiple pulse baton strikes, which I've already shown could liquefy the average enemy and pulverize a futuristic analogue of concrete, and he survived a point blank Nova round detonation.**

 **Notice how the Culexus fights have increased in order of relative difficulty each time. Garm was simply a mindless brute. Jona was running on fear and instinct. Taniks actually had training and discipline, and almost killed Mordin flat out. And now Vyrnnus, by himself and almost criminally under equipped for the fight, still almost matched Garrus wearing Alliance armor and wielding prototype Citadel military technology. Discipline and training plays a big part in their relative effectiveness.**

 **Vyrnnus did most of his damage without ever showing up in person. He kept his mind and planned things out, which is what none of the others did. Out of the four, he was the most effective of the Reapers pawns.**

* * *

 **RandomKitsune, I will send you your spoiler tonight.**

 **And then there was one: the fates of three of your favorite characters.**

 **Specify which three in your review if you want it.**


	50. Powder keg and a lit fuse

**Well it had to happen sometime. I recently got orders to deploy, and I'm heading off to Sand Land. Hello, 140 degree weather.**

 **With this, we are done with ME2. Please let me know what you think of the ending!**

Chapter Forty-eight

 **The Olympus, Secure Communications**

"Hold on, start over from the beginning," Hackett ordered. "Agent Lawson sent you what, exactly?"

 _"About twelve hours ago, we received a burst transmission from Agent Lawson,"_ Pressly explained. _"The message only contained some encrypted data, and we asked our friendly neighborhood geth to crack it. According to EDI, it was more of a data fragment, part of an archive that she thinks Agent Lawson attempted to copy from somewhere. She only got a couple files from it, if the geth aren't selling us a bridge and hiding the real message."_

"What are the files?"

 _"That's the interesting part, sir. They read like experiment logs, and the names of the subjects are very familiar to us."_

The fleet admiral thought for a moment and groaned. "Please tell me one of them isn't Saren Arterius."

 _"I'm afraid I cannot do that, sir."_

Hackett slapped his forehead and dragged his palm down his face, already feeling the impending migraine. "Great."

 _"The other name is the more troubling one, sir. Hierarchy Captain Vyrnnus. According to the Spectre, he was later demoted to Commander and discharged. He's the last of the major Culexus subjects at large."_

Hackett blinked. "If the file refers to him as a captain, then it must date from a while back."

 _"EDI's estimation is that the file dates back to the Second Contact War and the period right after Admiral Drescher retook the planet."_

"Wait just a damned minute. Are you saying that these are Alliance experiment logs?" the admiral demanded.

Pressly's holographic figure shrugged. _"I can't say myself, sir."_

"I was the captain of the St. Helens," Hackett recalled. "We held the prisoners in our brig. Nothing was supposed to happen on the carrier without me knowing about it." His brow furrowed. "Wait, Miranda was operating in the Terminus Systems. Why would anyone there have a file like this? And who did she get it from?"

 _"You would probably know better than I would, sir. I take it that Agent Lawson's work is compartmentalized, and we don't have a need to know."_

Hackett ignored him, thinking back to his previous conversation with Dr. Vahlen and General Summers. Then he looked back up. "Where are you now, Commander?"

 _"We're holding position inside of the Citadel. The Spectre got a tip that Vyrnnus headed to the Citadel, and we recently heard that Citadel Security HQ was attacked. The Spectre, the Quarian, the Captain and the marines went down to investigate and-"_ Pressly turned away to acknowledge something on his end. _"Sir, we just confirmed the identity of the Embassy attackers. They're under attack by the Vex. The Relief Detachment is en route to evacuate them."_

"The 'Vex'?" The older officer parroted.

 _"Long story short, renegade geth allied with the Reapers. Sir, I'll have to cut this short. The situation over here just went really pear-shaped."_

"Keep me informed." The hologram winked out, and Hackett stepped out of the room. "Commander Chen!"

The officer in question ran up to him. "Sir?"

"Have we had any contact with Agent Lawson recently?"

The woman pursed her lips and shook her head. "No sir. Our last communique was over two weeks ago. Her last report was that she was about to attack the Shadow Broker's ship."

"Get ahold of her right now," Hackett ordered. "Emergency orders to communicate. I want you to let me know the moment you make contact with her."

"Right away, sir!"

 **Citadel, Alliance Embassy**

General Summers snarled again as his attempt to rip apart the humanoid abomination in front of him was aborted in favor of shielding himself from another determined assault. One on one, even as an unaugmented human, he would have had little trouble dismembering his opponent. The problem was the geth surrounding him on all sides, supporting his opponent by continuously bombarding him with bluish plasma. The situation was not helped at all by the arrival of geth Crawlers and Baller units. Now his psionic shields were constantly battered and barraged by enemy fire from every side. But the moment he tried to summon up a rift to shred the geth, this damned enemy biotic got right in his face.

A long time ago, he'd refused gene mods as a matter of personal principle, swearing to defeat the Ethereal menace as a baseline human to prove that it was possible. At the time, it was meant to inspire his comrades and subordinates. Later, when he'd been revived, he had again refused, but on the basis of his future position as a general officer, too old and injured to take to the field. Now, he was beginning to regret that choice. His aged human body, even with the more crippling effects of time reversed through medical treatment, was simply incapable of holding up well enough in the face of this extended fight. The only thing keeping him moving, and therefore alive, was his psionic abilities, and those would give out, sooner or later.

It was only a momentary lapse in his full attention. His eyes were drawn to the somewhat familiar screech of an Alliance Skyranger overhead. In an instant, he stepped back in time. He was wearing carapace armor once again, one hand clenched firmly around a pistol scavenged from a dead comrade, and desperately fighting his way to the LZ for evac. He flicked his eyes back, and for that instant, he saw not the glowing blue eyes of the strange human biotic, but the dead glassy eyes of a chryssalid-infested corpse.

The corpse swung its arm, and he instinctively raised his arm as he'd done almost two hundred years ago. The impact sent him flying.

And now history and the present diverged. In his memories, he'd scrambled back up and fired a lucky shot right to the solar plexus that destroyed the egg, dropping the corpse to the ground. Instead, he found his chest was inexplicably heavy, and the corpse was standing over him. He blinked, and just as the image cleared, bringing him back to reality and revealing the strange enemy biotic, the world flashed blue.

* * *

There was no mistaking the figure on the ground as the enemy withdrew from its strike. To her credit, Lieutenant Colonel Nagase remained professional, even as she witnessed the death of the Alliance's Chief Military Officer.

 _"Friendly down! Friendly down at the Embassy!"_

"Hot drop!" Shepard ordered, rising to her feet.

The _Arkbird_ ejected the cover plates as it passed over before slewing around, already opening the rear door and unraveling the ziplines.

"Go, go, go!" the gunnery sergeant bellowed as he and Shepard led the charge off the ramp, swinging down to take cover behind the plates just as the Vex turned their attention and fire onto the newly deployed marines.

"Unidentified tango!"

"I'll handle it!" Shepard roared, leaping forward to intercept the charging figure as the Skyranger turned and unleashed its plasma projectors.

 _"All units, this is Lieutenant Colonel Nagase, callsign Arkbird. We are deploying reinforcements from the Normandy under the orders of Captain Shepard. We have established a fire position near the main building! Check your fire!"_

 _"This is Warden. Please authenticate. Lima Romeo Two."_

The colonel swore as she glanced down at her kneepad. _"Whiskey Niner Delta!"_

 _"Arkbird, say your exact position, over."_

 _"Warden, I have a squad of marines and Captain Shepard holding at the wreckage that used to be the main Embassy building! I'm running overwatch with a Skyranger, but we got geth pouring out the ass over here!"_ Instincts forced her to jerk her craft to the side as a bolt of biotic energy sailed past from the melee down below.

 _"Copy. Your position is at the main building. Be advised, I am sending our heavy armor unit up from behind. Be on the lookout for any survivors."_

 _"Hate to tell you this, Warden, but there ain't gonna be any survivors! The fucking geth just killed the General!"_

There was an excruciatingly long silence over the line. _"Arkbird, say again. Repeat your last transmission."_

 _"General Summers is confirmed KIA! We are dealing with the force responsible!"_

The speaker on the other end voiced the thoughts of every marine in earshot. _"God damn it!"_

 **Citadel, Evacuation Route**

Captain Anderson groaned and rested his forehead on his palm, drawing a concerned look from the corpsman behind him.

"Are you okay, sir?"

The captain looked back. "I'm fine. It's just…hell, General Summers is dead."

The petty officer paled. "The general?!"

"He may be dead, but this isn't the time for us to worry about that," Anderson said sharply. "Lieutenant, I assume you heard the radio chatter. There's nothing we can do about that right now, so focus on the task at hand. We need to get the civilians to the docks, understood?"

 _"Loud and clear, sir,"_ Kyle Shepard answered nervously.

"Arkbird, this is Vanguard. We are escorting the civilians to the docks for extraction. Do you have anyone there to meet and greet?"

 _"Vanguard, this is Pixy. I got a bunch of marines raring to go at the docks, and I am headed your way to provide overwatch."_

Anderson grinned, in spite of the growing bruise on the side of his head. "Hello again, buddy. Just like old times, eh?"

 _"Open line, Blackhorse. That stuff is still classified, remember?"_ A short pause. _"Heads up. I got three Citadel Security air transports heading your way."_

"About time they showed up," Anderson growled. "Try and make contact so we can coordinate with them."

 _"Not answering hails. All three of them have some kind of battle damage though."_

The captain frowned. "What the hell happened at C-Sec?"

 _"Orders, sir?"_ Kyle asked.

The senior officer thought for a moment. Meanwhile, the communications sergeant made his way forward. "Sir, we just copied a hail on the usual channel we use to communicate with C-Sec."

"Stand by, Shepard," the captain ordered while gesturing to the sergeant to switch channels. "This is Captain Anderson of the Alliance Navy. Who am I speaking to?"

 _"Sir, this is Lieutenant Halven Reken of C-Sec. You may have heard that our HQ was attacked a while ago. We just heard the distress call, and we came to render assistance. Unfortunately, our radios are kind of patchy. Could we have a face-to-face?"_

"Sir, protocol requires a straight run to the docks," a Staff Sergeant reminded the officer.

"Circumstances can change," Anderson replied. "Lieutenant Reken, we'll find a place to hole up for a chat, but time is of the essence."

 _"Understood. We'll follow your lead."_

The comms sergeant switched back. "Shepard, find a clear spot. We're going to partially disembark. Secure the perimeter, but do not let the civilians leave the transports. We'll chat with C-Sec, and then we'll keep moving."

 _"Copy that, sir."_

Two minutes later, the armored transports settled down to a stop on the street. Onlookers fled as heavily armed and twitchy Alliance Marines erupted from the vehicles and manned the machine gun turrets. Overhead, a C-Sec transport passed and landed ahead of the convoy. Not ten seconds later, the Alliance Skyranger settled down, and Captain Silva made his way over to the officers and senior enlisted men in charge.

"Glad to see some friendly faces around here," Anderson said, extending a hand. After a pause, the turian lieutenant shook it reluctantly. "What happened at C-Sec HQ?"

"We don't know," an asari officer replied. "We were doing patrols out on the streets when we heard the distress call."

"When we came close to the Embassy, we saw all the gunfire and figured there was no way we could safely get in there," the lieutenant explained. "Our transports aren't rated for heavy assault."

"Lieutenant," Shepard turned toward the comms sergeant. "We got a signal from C-Sec Headquarters."

Anderson raised an eyebrow as Shepard moved off a bit, closely followed by a salarian police officer with a shotgun cradled in his hands. "You were doing street patrols in an airborne transport?"

"We were en route to a drug sting," the turian said.

"Yes?" Shepard answered the radio.

 _"This is Acting Executor Decian Chellick. I just got a handle on C-Sec Headquarters, and I'm sending guys your way to help with the evacuation."_

"Thanks. We just ran into some of your guys already. We'll take all the help we can get."

 _"Wait what?"_

"Yeah, a Lieutenant Reken just landed here to help out. He heard the distress call and-"

 _"Reken is there?! No, listen! Reken isn't there on my authority! He's the one who attacked C-Sec Headquarters!"_

Shepard turned slightly, eyeing the turian more than ten steps away. "Say what?"

 _"Get your men out of there now! Reken is a traitor!"_

Shepard's eyes widened in realization as Captain Anderson's instincts alerted him early. The captain whirled forward, drawing his pistol and bashing the turian lieutenant across the face with the butt, crushing the right eye socket before drawing a bead on the asari cop next to him and firing a crimson beam through her forehead. "AMBUSH! AMBUSH!"

Kyle Shepard never had the chance to raise his weapon as the salarian officer jammed the muzzle of his shotgun right up against his chest piece and fired at point blank range. The air in weapon that was encapsulated by the mass effect aura before being flung down the barrel augmented a hail of sand-sized shrapnel into a devastating blast that obliterated the lieutenant's diaphragm and severed his spinal column. Murdered and murderer stared at each other for an instant that lasted an eternity before the lieutenant's torso began to fall, tenuously held by threads of flesh to his pelvic area.

"Shit! They made us!" another turian officer yelped before a pulse laser turret evaporated several fist sized holes in his torso.

The comms sergeant screamed with rage before vaporizing the salarian's head with his rifle. "The lieutenant is KIA!"

"Pixy! In the air! Now now now!" Silva roared as a sudden surge of metallic humanoid shapes erupted from the side streets.

 **Citadel, Alliance Embassy**

Shepard roared as she slammed the strange human into the ground by the neck before forming a drill-shaped aura around her left fist and punching the head with all her might. The head exploded in bits of tissue and electronic components, but the enemy used its remaining arm to fire a blast in her face, shoving her off. But Shepard rolled with it, clearing out as the now blinded unit was vulnerable to a strafing from the _Arkbird_. The putrid scent of roasted flesh permeated the battlefield, but the enemy struggled to its feet, only to be obliterated by a hardened plasma round from one of the four tanks that now surveyed the compound.

Various pieces of the Vex attackers lay strewn around the Embassy grounds, intermixed with several marines who'd perished during the initial onslaught, feeding the collective rage of the defenders. With no remaining enemies nearby, Shepard allowed herself to collapse against the metal cover plate, nursing an ankle that she knew from experience would soon swell to the size of a grapefruit under her armor. Her vision swam from exhaustion and sweat as she keyed her radio. "This is Captain Shepard. Our position is clear of hostiles. Recommend we secure the front gate area and start the sweep for survivors."

 _"Copy that ma'am. Sweepers en route."_

"Well that took you long enough, Shepard."

Shepard looked up from her position and laughed dryly. "Stuff it, Massani. This isn't Jaeger school."

"It's 'Finn' right now," the man retorted with a smirk. "I'm undercover."

"Yeah? What are you doing here anyway?"

'Finn' leaned over and patted her cheek. "That's classified, sweetheart. You know how it goes." He straightened up and his expression turned more fatherly. "In case you're wondering, your little brother is safe."

"Oh that's a relief," the red-head sighed. "Where is he?"

"He's escorting the convoy with Captain Anderson. Nothing exciting so far."

At that moment, the radio erupted again. _"This is Pixy! The convoy has been ambushed by C-Sec and Vex! Requesting immediate assist!"_

Both soldiers froze and stared at the comm, and then there was a sudden absence of red-head against the cover plate.

 **Citadel, Council Transport**

"This is an unmigitated disaster," Sparatus muttered, sweat gleaming on his face. "An attack like this on the Alliance Embassy by Vyrnnus's geth? And traitors in C-Sec?"

"It is quite the predicament," Valern agreed. "And then there's Irissa. With Tevos dead, she's the strongest contender for the Asari seat, but her views and ideas are…of questionable benefit."

In the front area of the transport, Garrus and Tali sat sullenly against the wall. For the former, the shock had passed, and now his rage was searching for a clear target. He was assigning blame. Mordin certainly had his share of it. If he hadn't made the decision to release the Culexus subjects, his family would still be alive. But there was what Vyrnnus had said. Was the Alliance really responsible for Saren's behavior? He would like to think otherwise, but the Alliance was quite capable of pulling off something like that. And from his own experience in Blackwatch, he knew very well how people on the muscle end were often ignorant of the big picture.

Tali nervously watched his face, reading his thoughts, and worrying about the impending explosion. She tentatively put a hand on his arm. "Garrus?"

The quarian flinched at the stormy and murderous expression on his face, which softened into some shame as he remembered where he was. "Sorry, Tali. It's just…Vyrnnus said some things, and I want answers. I want…I want to know the real reason my family died." His hand tightened on the muzzle of his rifle, which he'd held onto like a lifeline in stormy seas.

Tali blinked behind her mask. "But didn't Reken kill your father because he was a senior officer of C-Sec?"

"I can understand _that_ part," Garrus growled. "but my mom and my sister too?! They were innocent! They weren't even supposed to be there!"

"Garrus, I…"

"She was recovering!" the turian went on. "After all these years, we were finally going to be together again! I wanted to have more time with her! With dad and Solana! And now they're…" Tali had to lean in close to hear the last word. "…gone."

Tali felt a pang as she remembered that her father had similarly been killed recently, but she was at a loss for words.

"Sir," the copilot swiveled around and leaned over toward the couple. "we just got word from the Executor. The Alliance evacuation convoy is under attack. Reken was spotted there."

Garrus jumped to his feet. "Get us over there on the double. I want that son of a bitch!"

"Um, sir, the traitors launched an attack, so anything with the C-Sec emblem is going to be shot at on sight."

"Get us within five blocks. I'll head over there myself." The Spectre looked at the quarian. "Tali, stay on the transport."

"Garrus…"

"It's too dangerous!" the turian shook his head. "You two!" the other two C-Sec officers turned their heads. "Make sure she stays on the ship when I leave."

"I can handle myself!" Tali objected.

"No! I won't allow it!"

"Garrus!"

Tali was caught off guard as the turian pulled her into a hug. "I can't lose you too…" he whispered. "Please stay here."

 **Citadel, Evacuation Route**

Almost before the ramp had opened, Shepard was already diving off the _Arkbird_ , using her psionic armor to protect herself from the fall.

The site was a mess. Vex and C-Sec bodies all around. Two wrecked transports straddling the path forward and back, blocking the vehicles from going through, and one of the convoy vehicles lay on its side as marines hauled the injured out of the doors and corpsmen hurried between patients.

The attack had been fought off, and Captain Anderson sat on a wing of the third C-Sec transport, which was crumpled against the overturned convoy vehicle. Next to him, Captain Silva stood in silence, his face grim as the senior Staff Sergeant gave the officers a rundown of the situation.

"Ma'am," Silva snapped a salute on pure instinct, which Shepard ignored as she ran up to Anderson.

"Where's Kyle?!"

Anderson made a pained grimace holding his side. "Shepard…"

"Where is he?! _Where's my little brother?!"_

Wordlessly, Anderson looked at the Staff Sergeant, who uneasily jerked his thumb at the row of covered stretchers. The three men watched as the female officer's world shattered.

"No…" Anderson shot to his feet to catch his former subordinate as she fell against him in shock. "…no…" she continued weakly, as the group slowly moved over to the particular stretcher.

"Corpsman," the petty officer looked up, and then his tired eyes widened and he snapped to attention. "Where's the lieutenant?" Anderson asked.

"Um, over here sir…ma'am," the man answered uncertainly as he walked over with the senior staff in tow, stopping in front of the body in question.

Anderson gently turned the red-head around to face the body. "Shepard?" the junior captain nodded stiffly, eyes staring into the distance, still in shock.

The corpsman slowly rolled back the sheet, exposing exactly what Shepard was afraid to see. Below his shoulders, the cloth was stained a very dark crimson.

"Kyle…" she breathed, falling to her knees next to the stretcher.

"There was nothing we could do," the petty officer told them. "If it's any consolation he died almost instantly from blood loss."

"Thank you corpsman," the Staff Sergeant said, waving him off.

 _"Captain Anderson, perimeter contact. IFF says it's one of ours, registered to…Garrus Vakarian."_

Anderson looked at his radio, but Silva beat him to it. "This is Captain Silva. Let him through. My authorization."

"One of ours?" Anderson queried.

"Since he deployed with us, the techs made him a set of HADES armor," Silva explained. "He's put it to good use."

The Spectre walked over, rifle slung over his back and flanked by two marine escorts. Silva waved them off.

"Vyrnnus?" Silva asked.

"He won't be bothering anyone again," the turian replied harshly with a dark glare.

"Well that's good," the marine officer said, taken slightly aback by the glare.

"Did the Alliance experiment on Saren?" the Spectre demanded.

Anderson and Silva looked at each other in confusion, but before they could answer, Shepard's voice beat them to it.

"How did you-?!" Garrus snapped his head toward the shocked red-head, who abruptly realized what she'd just said. "I-I mean who-"

"So it's true," Garrus growled. "It's true what he said, isn't it?"

"Who said what?" Anderson asked.

"Before he died, Vyrnnus told me a little story that involved him and Saren Arterius being brainwashed by the Alliance," Garrus rattled off without taking his eyes off the emotionally broken woman.

Anderson squinted slightly. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Garrus, it's not like that!" Shepard protested, getting to her feet.

"Is it? IS IT?!" the turian yelled. "Then tell me what it's really like! Tell me exactly why Vyrnnus and you both know something when you couldn't have ever talked to each other! Tell me exactly why my family is dead! Tell me that you aren't responsible for Saren going off the rails!"

"Alright that's enough," Anderson cut in. "Mister Vakarian, I don't know what you're talking about, but I assure you the Alliance has nothing to do with it."

Garrus snorted. "That's not what Shepard says," he snapped.

"She's in shock right now, and she's not thinking straight! That's her little brother lying under that sheet!"

"And my entire family is lying in their own blood back at C-Sec headquarters!" Garrus retorted. "I want to know the truth!"

"The truth is that the Alliance has never brainwashed either Vyrnnus or Saren!"

"You'll forgive me if I don't find that good enough, especially when Shepard seems to know what I'm talking about!" The Spectre paused for breath before continuing. "One way or another, I will figure out the truth, and you better be right. Because if you're not, then the next time we meet, I'm going to shoot on sight."

 **The Olympus, CNO Office**

Hackett grumbled to himself as he looked through the old personnel files regarding his former command. It had taken him considerable time to personally track down the files without relying on his staff, but it couldn't be helped. If EXALT had pulled something on the Trafalgar involving the prisoners, then that was just more proof that they held influence at the very highest level of the Alliance military.

He scowled when he heard the knock on the door, but kept his voice neutral. "Enter."

Commander Chen stood in the doorway, hands clasped in front of her waist nervously. "Sir, you said to let you know the moment we got ahold of Agent Lawson."

"And did you?"

The officer shook her head. "No sir. She has not responded to the emergency orders. The locator beacon for her ship has been disabled. We cannot find her."

Hackeet stood up from his desk, his prior concerns forgotten. "What are you saying?" he demanded.

"Sir, it is a very real possibility that Agent Lawson has gone rogue."

 ** _2189_**

 _In the aftermath of the Embassy Assault, Councilor Udina's comatose body is recovered from the wreckage of the main building. He later awakens after nearly nine months of treatment._

 _The death of General Marcus Summers stuns the Alliance populace, while the circumstances of his death infuriate them. Per a deal with the newly reconstituted Citadel Councilors, the knowledge of the Culexus Project is covered up, leaving weak excuses that do little to assuage the public anger. Earth is the site of a massive funeral ceremony as humanity's greatest hero is given a final sendoff into the sun. The entirety of the Muton and Cydonian fleet contributions to the Alliance are present for the ceremony._

 _The Alliance closes its Embassy in the Wards and withdraws its permanent presence from the Citadel, heralding very tense and tenuous relations in the wake of the attack. Prior to this event, the interim ambassador relayed the Alliance Chairman's demand for a thorough investigation of C-Sec due to the involvement of traitorous officers in the attack that claimed the lives of twenty-nine marines and sixteen Alliance officials and civilians. Arrangements are made for official communications through the Embassy on Shanxi, ensuring that physical security of Alliance personnel will no longer be an issue._

 _Major Armando-Owens Bailey is relieved of his position as Embassy Garrison commander and subject to extensive investigation by Alliance Intelligence for possible misconduct. This very public investigation ends quickly when no less than Fleet Admiral Hackett intervenes, censuring several civilian officials who ordered the investigation for attempting to ruin the life of an outstanding officer who was merely placed in a very difficult situation._

 _Spectre Garrus Vakarian returns to Hierarchy service in his former capacity as a Blackwatch officer. He is immediately promoted to Major and placed in charge of developing anti-Alliance tactics. Despite his reputation as an Alliance sympathizer, he surprises many by rapidly coming up with hardline tactics using new equipment under development by the Hierarchy and the Union._

 _Irissa takes the Asari Council seat left by Tevos. To the surprise of many, Matriarch Aethyta announces her support of the hawkish asari. Stunned observers wonder what would push the enigmatic matriarch to reenter the field of politics, though more savvy and knowledgeable operators whisper that she is merely hoping to curb the new councilor's more extreme ideas and policies._

 _Despite strong efforts at information control, a recording of the battle between former Commander Lethe Vyrnnus and Spectre Garrus Vakarian leaks out onto the Extranet, complete with patchy and suggestive dialogue. A firestorm erupts across Citadel Space, raising new tensions between humans and the other races and providing the Alliance additional incentive to close down their embassy compound. Influential firebrands declare the Alliance withdrawal as further proof of guilt._

 _Due to rising tensions, a general mobilization of the Citadel races' military forces is ordered. This is mirrored by the Alliance, increasing the tension between the two galactic superpowers. Onlookers on both sides dub this the "Galactic Cold War."_

 **Tartarus**

"I see the assault is going well," Dr. Core noted.

"By all accounts, our men have found some very interesting data in the station archives," Harper replied. He turned to regard his second in command. "I'm glad you helped me change my mind about the assault."

Core smiled triumphantly, noting the faint green tinge in her old friend's eyes. "Well, you've always said I have a way with words."

 _Dossier: Sean 'Mickey' Finn (aka, Zaeed Massani)_

 _Born on the streets of Dublin in 2003, Sean Finn scraped by living as a thief, stealing and panhandling from the populace to feed himself and some of his friends. During his teenage years, he found his way to London with a crew of hardened vagrants, just in time for the Ethereal War to begin. Caught out in an alien warzone with destruction on all sides, he sought refuge in the London Home Guard, where he first learned to shoot a rifle. He quickly proved to be a natural with weapons, and possessed a keen eye that landed him a position as a scout._

 _He would distinguish himself by aiding the Home Guard, and X-COM by extension, when they went abroad in Europe, hunting government officials and unsavory characters who collaborated with the invaders, and earning the nickname 'Mickey' for his skill at discreetly tailing and subduing his targets in bars with a sedative concoction of his own design._

 _After the war, he was one of the first to volunteer for the newly created Alliance military, having become a hardened young lad and willing to take the fight wherever it may have led. Upon completing his initial training, he was given a new name and sent out to perform similar tasks to his wartime jobs, hunting down any remaining traitorous individuals for trial._

 _Decades later, he was loaned to Alliance Intelligence as a Chief Warrant Officer (one) on a semi-permanent basis, where he has remained ever since, performing special duties and serving as an instructor and field operative for Cerberus on occasion. His date of rank as Chief Warrant Officer (four) is 2100. He held his previous rank for over sixty years, stubbornly refusing promotion until the very beginning of that year._

 _Addendum: Subject is a member of the Prometheus Initiative, a group that predates the Jaegers as anti-psion hunters._

 **Oh boy. Dr. Core has done it now!**

 **And here is the culmination of the Reaper's pre-invasion plans. They have jammed a massive and solid wedge firmly between the Alliance and the Citadel races. Once again, divide and conquer. Of course, certain shadowy parties didn't do the galaxy any favors at all by making underhanded long term plays.**

 **With the exception of the people I handed out spoilers to, can anyone figure out the whole story behind Vyrnnus and Saren?**

 **For anyone who is still too obtuse to see it, Tali/Garrus is official. *ominous chuckle***

 **And as for Miranda, what is it that made her so concerned? What did she see or hear in Kasumi's memories?**


	51. Roll Out the Welcome Mat

**Sorry for the late chapter. I'm doing research for the next one. The subject: gamma radiation and antimatter annihilation.**

 **On a related note: did you know that lightning storms can generate gamma rays? Something to think about next time you find yourself flying through a thunderstorm.**

 **EDIT: Thank you, deitarionSSokolow, for pointing out my error regarding gravity waves. I had been operating under an outdated assumption, and we all know what happens when you assume.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Forty-nine

 **2190**

 **Citadel, Council Chambers**

Sparatus spared a glance at the exoskeleton-clad C-Sec officers before pushing through the door. It was such a waste of time and resources, in his opinion, to outfit them with that kind of equipment. Past events aside, the Citadel was not a warzone. Of course, try telling that to Irissa. He shook his head as the door closed behind him.

While he had an inkling of what was on the agenda today, it was still an unwelcome sight to see Councilor Valern in the company of another salarian that he detested. Dalatrass Linron. He could not for the life of him imagine a more self-serving individual. Since Tevos's death and Irissa's ascension, the Dalatrass had been slowly acquiring the political capital to depose Valern's seat and replace him with a puppet of her choosing. The salarian councilor had seemed, if anything, resigned to letting it happen.

"And so the last guest arrives," the Dalatrass drawled. "Now we can get started."

Irissa merely nodded a greeting as he approached. "Let's just get this over with," the turian grumbled, shooting a glare at the salarian woman.

"Councilor Valern, you are hereby relieved of your position as the representative of the Union. Your replacement, Councilor Isheel, will be arriving shortly."

"On behalf of the Republics, I would like to thank you for your selfless service to the galaxy, and I wish you the best in your future endevours." Sparatus mentally snorted, certain that the words burned Irissa's throat in transit. The asari had made no secret of her disdain for the "appeaser" of the Alliance. He had no doubt that she actually wished he would suffer a horrific death rather than a nice calm retirement.

"As does the Hierarchy. Your insight will be missed."

Valern nodded in acceptance, and the short little ceremony was over. The aides with the cameras left the room, and Sparatus turned to walk back out. He was mildly surprised that Valern moved to join him.

"Why didn't you fight for your seat?" he asked.

"Because there would have been little point," the salarian replied. "My position was tenuous even before Vyrnnus killed Tevos. With Irissa and the Republics providing backdoor support, it was only a matter of time."

"Yeah, well now I'm the only one left to reign the Council in," Sparatus pointed out. "Unless I'm mistaken, Isheel and Irissa have no idea the realities that our soldiers would face in the field, or any extended experience with the Alliance."

"Which is exactly why Primarch Fedorian has refused to cave to Irissa and the Dalatrass's demands to replace you," Valern countered with an amused smirk as the turian eyed him with surprise. "Just because I didn't fight my replacement doesn't mean I have given up. More than anything else, I want you to know that you are the last bastion of sanity on the Citadel. No matter what, you can't leave now. The alternative is to move into open war with the Alliance. And you know as well as I do how such a venture will end."

The turian smiled ruefully. "Nice to hear you have confidence in my position as the sole voice of reason. I don't have much hope that I can convince Irissa to lay off."

"You have Matriarch Aethyta as an ally."

"Really? Isn't she Irissa's primary backer?"

"Have you ever heard the saying 'you can trust your enemies, but not your allies?' My sources in the STG tell me that she is more interested in deescalating tensions. For example, I have it on good authority that she has been bankrolling a number of the talking heads on the Extranet that are screaming about how the Alliance is manipulating us from behind the scenes."

Sparatus frowned. "Why the hell would she do that if she's trying to lower tensions?"

"She's thinking in the long term," Valern answered simply. "The more time passes where these people rail against the humans without anything happening, no conflicts or incidents, the more the people will disregard them, and public opinion will start turning against the warmongers. She's propping them up as a visible contrast to reality. The average person out there can see that things are not as bad as they imply. That and the strain on families and our economy will dampen public support for military mobilization when the threat doesn't materialize. Or that's the theory." The salarian snorted. "I am not quite so confident."

"Talk about a complex gambit," the turian breathed, rubbing his forehead before a thought occurred to him. "Is that why you proposed that the Alliance close their embassy and make arrangements through Shanxi?"

"I thought it would further undercut any efforts to play agent provocateur with the Alliance."

"So you've known about this from the beginning."

"I suspected," the salarian corrected. "Aethyta has also gathered an astonishing array of allies back on Thessia, including many who would normally oppose her just on principle. Naturally, the STG has yet to determine the details, but the way they all jumped to support her the very same day she announced her sponsorship of Irissa's seat makes me suspect some form of leverage. This flies in the face of her past activities. She withdrew from Thessian politics almost two hundred cycles ago, and has mainly spent time as a dancer, mercenary, and bartender, in that order. It would be understandable if she had information on a few matriarchs, but so many at once?"

Sparatus shrugged. "Maybe she saved up a lot of money to buy the information from the Shadow Broker."

"Unlikely. Such a heavy reliance on one source of information could be crippling."

"Well do you have any other theories?"

The salarian shook his head. "Admittedly, no. But I digress. The reason for this talk is to make sure you are aware of your current position of influence, and to tell you to seek out allies. You were a soldier, and you have been a fine politician thus far. But now you will need to step up your game."

"Sir," a C-Sec guard approached. "Councilor Isheel's transport has arrived."

Valern sighed. "Well, this is goodbye. I wish you luck."

Sparatus waved as his former associate left, and then began going through his list of contacts. He had gotten the message loud and clear. His first call would be to the Primarch. Time to get to work.

 **Bahak**

Scattered throughout the system were various probes. Particularly expensive ones that communicated with a transmitter hidden in a free-floating asteroid. They had been planted a few years prior for a singular purpose, one that they would fulfill today.

The probes were run by mere subroutines. Through quantum-entanglement pairs, they formed an instantaneous sensor net that stretched across the entire star system. Around the entire galaxy, there were several more networks like this one. Each positioned to cover the entire system they resided in.

And each in a system inhabited by a Mass Relay.

To destroy a relay was unthinkable to most. For the majority, it was a question of sheer size. A fifteen-kilometer structure of supremely durable material would qualify as functionally indestructible to the layman. For others, it was a matter of sanity. At the center of that massive night-indestructible construct was an extremely energetic core operating at critical capacity and somehow sustaining itself without any known input source. Even the brightest minds in the galaxy could not understand the mechanism, but it was no great stretch of intellect to understand that the rest of the relay functioned to keep the energy in the core safely contained and usable.

Any potential compromise of the structure could release it all at once. In purely energetic terms, the yield would be horrific. Even more so if the relay was in the process of accelerating a spacecraft to beyond relativistic speeds across the galaxy. But the energy of the core also affected the very fabric of space-time. When taking that aspect into account, a few of those bright minds believed it could greatly expand the damage radius of the explosion. Potentially, the entire star system would be forfeit, along with every inhabitant.

Which was exactly what those minds wanted. Which was why the relays had been subtly altered, sabotaged, to fail on command in the worst possible way. Which turned the entire star system, with its sensor net and relay, into a gigantic trap.

One of several star-system sized traps lain on the edges of the galaxy to cause tremendous damage to the enemy. And that enemy was about to arrive.

There was another side to the insidious strategy, one that predated the star system's self-destruct and that of its cohorts. Immediately after the Alliance had learned of the Citadel Races and their heavy reliance on the Mass Relays, Cerberus had gone into overtime, sending out scads of agents to covertly map out the Citadel's network as well as lay the groundwork for a reconnaissance network the likes of which would utterly terrify the Citadel races.

The Salarians had once considered establishing something similar. They had even implemented a much cruder and slower version during the Krogan Rebellions by stationing ships near the relays. Most remained hidden while one was always within thirty seconds of leaving via the relay to alert the turian fleets to oncoming Krogan marauders. The makeshift network saved many worlds and countless lives, but the fact had remained that it was reliant on people, and communication was delayed.

The Alliance network, by comparison, literally spared no expense. This fact was unknown even to the Alliance itself, save for those who served two masters. It was also far larger than the Alliance was aware of. Through the efforts of those two-faced individuals and the second party, the network had been completed far ahead of schedule. Numerous powerful sensor banks had been integrated into every known Mass Relay and linked to a supercomputer that could map and analyze all traffic through the relays by matching ship signatures from one set of sensors (at the departure point) to another (at the arrival point). Literally no one could use the Relay network without the knowledge of the operators.

Of course, the network had limits. It would not know the identities of ship owners, passengers or pilots, nor could it determine cargo, point of origin, or final destination. But it could enable strategically placed interceptor units to pounce on any area of the network and make short work of the target.

The cost of the entire project was mind-bending. One accountant had estimated it to be the value of every ounce of real estate on planet Earth. Twice over.

But Donovan Hock considered it money well spent.

 **Unknown space**

Hermann Ubrect sighed and tossed his hand on the table. "I fold."

One of the hidden station's engineers across the table grinned and swept the pile of chips toward himself. "Ye really should have kept it, laddie."

"Yeah, just you wait," the Cerberus agent muttered, taking a dagger and idly flipping it around in an impressive display of dexterity before sheathing it again as the dealer shuffled. "I'll get you on my next break."

He stood up as a new round of cards was dealt, and walked toward his post.

"Three twos, a jack and a six, eh?" Hislop smirked, drawing an unimpressed look.

"Like that's a brilliant deduction for you when you've hacked into the breakroom cameras."

"Hey, Lars was right. You should have held out."

"Bragging rights got old real fast once it sank it that I'm stuck here for about another four years," Ubrect replied, deadpan, "ever since Miranda Lawson up and vanished."

Hislop's face turned serious. "She hasn't found out where Lawson went?"

"The director reassigned her to Admiral Hackett, and even he doesn't know where the woman went to ground."

"Well, you're in the right place to catch her if she uses the relays."

"Only if someone identifies her before that. But she was trained by the best. She's not going to be that easy to track down."

A loud chirping came from the computer terminal as a message appeared onscreen.

"Huh? Activity in the Bahak system?"

Ubrect smiled. "Finally, we can give the Reapers a proper welcome.

 **Bahak**

At the edge of the net, distant signatures were coming into view. They were approximately twenty light-hours away, but that simply meant they would be physically present soon.

Since the Alliance had gotten their hands on the Leviathan of Dis, moles from within had constructed a signature profile that the computer would match up against other Reapers. Given the nature of the ancient ship, it was not perfect. Later on, the computer would be discovered to have only found a 63% match on characteristics with any of the Reapers. But it would suffice.

They came as a massive host. The number of signatures quickly reached triple digits. Roughly thirty peeled off from the mass, sailing through space at breakneck speed toward Aratoht, and easy batarian prey.

The rest eagerly swarmed towards the relay. The ancient machine powered up and began to fling the Reapers into the galactic interior, one by one. Meanwhile, the glut of newcomers grew. Nearly four hours after the initial sighting, the system was packed. But now the numbers ceased to grow.

And now the signal arrived. A small adaptive program had analyzed the relay's energy signature under operation, building a model and tweaking it so that it could properly time the detonation signal for the hidden explosives to destabilize the relay's core at the point of maximum yield. With the authorization signal, the program was fully released to fulfill its purpose.

The most unfortunate Reaper in the galaxy moved forward to take its turn, and a tendril of Dark Energy curled off the ancient machine, almost like an alien limb, readying a throw. But then the explosives detonated, severing an armature and causing its contribution to the containment field to dissipate. Old programmed countermeasures activated, diverting a not-insubstantial amount of power to increase the strength of the other field armatures to contain the energy. But it was too late.

A new stream of Dark Energy speared from the core, blasting the Reaper straight on the front glacis of its hull. The chaotic energies wreaked havoc on the material, causing the machine to "bubble" in the very brief remnants of its existence before it was imploded and shot away from the relay.

Meanwhile, the energy lost in that small jet was but a drop in a vast ocean compared to what the increasingly strong magnetic containment field was struggling to hold back. But the laws of physics demanded failure, and with a silent groan, they did.

The tremendous current running to the armatures found a slight imperfection in the conduits that increased its local resistance just a bit more than the rest of the connection. At normal load, it would have been negligible. But now at nearly thirty times the operating current, it caused a significant temperature gradient that was enough to reach the melting point. The line severed itself, and suddenly, the current had nowhere to go.

Except where it was never meant to. The current shorted into the ancient machine's chassis and hull, traveling across to various other conduits at the speed of light, causing a near instantaneous failure of all the subsystems.

And finally unblocking the core and all of its pent-up energy.

There are few things in the universe of regular physics that are faster than light. The propagation of gravity waves through the fabric of space time, under the influence of the Mass Effect, is one of them. Thus, by the time the mass of Reapers near the relay visibly saw the core containment failure, they were already in the process of being destroyed, crushed in on themselves by a gigantic spike of Dark Energy that roiled outward, snuffing out everything in its path.

Literally, the Reapers closest to the relay never saw it coming.

The wave continued traveling, sweeping across the five planets in the system and wreaking havoc as it passed. The inhabitants of the sole colonized planet were crushed to a pulp against the surface of the planet, dying instantly. They would be lucky. And then the blast wave reached the system's sun.

The impact compressed one hemisphere, pressurizing the stellar core as it passed through the chromosphere and the convection zone. The star deformed into an ovoid around the core as the wave struggled mightily against the sheer mass of degenerate hydrogen. Then, like a rubber band, the mass snapped back. But not before the pressure around the stellar core dropped below the critical point. And the core popped like a water balloon.

The effect was catastrophic. Nearly one eighth of the material was suddenly free, spewing out back in the direction of the now non-existent relay as a massive jet of plasma, accompanied by an explosion of gamma rays, that fried three of the planets and stripped off their atmospheres. The rest of the core was propelled in the direction of the blast back into the rest of the star's material. Meanwhile, the trough of the gravity wave hit, reducing the effect of gravity as it passed through the star. Now, the force that used to hold the star together was effectively non-existent. And all the energy still remaining inside was unleashed.

The star exploded, finishing off what was left of the star system and the Reaper host still inside. The rest of the machines froze in Dark Space as they felt the cessation of one tenth of their number. Then, frantic notifications flooded in from their brethren, trapped deep inside the galaxy, of ambushes by human craft. Alliance craft.

And now the picture became clear. And a host of machines began plotting revenge.

 **2191**

 _The galaxy discovers that the Bahak System, home to approximately three hundred and five thousand Free Batarian citizens, has suddenly become inaccessible. As Citadel science crews rush in, their instruments detect a massive gravity wave that is far too large to be a natural occurrence. Rapid efforts to triangulate the origin of the wave place it approximately where the Bahak Relay was. Upon arrival at the edge of the system, a journey that ends almost three months after the initial discovery, the first ships were overwhelmed by cosmic radiation, with almost three entire crews succumbing to acute radiation exposure despite the shielding of the craft. Further attempts to explore the system are cut short by reports of other planets dropping out of contact around the Viper Nebula._

 _Various human colony planets in the Terminus system suffer total devastation. Initial reports determine the weapon damage to be very similar to that caused by the Saren Dreadnought. STG scouts describe the sites as reminiscent of a retaliation strike._

 **Eden Prime, Landing Area**

"Thank you major," a militia general said as the two asari and their escort approached.

Liara looked around as her mentor strode forward with a smile and an extended hand. "Hello," Doctor Gen'aris greeted the officer. "I assume you're in charge around here?"

"You assume correctly," the man smiled. "General Oleg Petrovsky, militia commander of Eden Prime. And I assume that both of you are familiar with Captain Kaidan Alenko?"

"Afraid I'm not," the doctor replied. "Should I be?"

"He is one of Shepard's officers," Liara explained, drawing a knowing smirk from the other asari.

"Once upon a time, Doctor T'Soni," Kaidan corrected her. "I was detached from her command, and now I have my own duties. Today, I'm your lead escort while you're here on the planet."

"Well at least we have a handsome face to look at," Gen'aris noted with a sultry grin.

Petrovsky coughed. "Ladies, I will take my leave, and place you in the care of these two capable officers. I hope you enjoy your stay."

"Ancient ruins, the thrill of discovery, and some nice-looking examples of humans all around," Gen'aris looked pointedly at Liara and waggled her eyebrows. "You bet I'll enjoy it here."

Liara sighed, masking her internal disappointment with well-worn exasperation for her teacher. It had been one of her staunchest hopes to run into Shepard during this excursion. She had been counting on it, knowing that the woman had the most exposure to her out of any Alliance personnel. But Kaidan was fulfilling that role instead.

"Ladies, your carriage awaits," the escorting major called, standing next to a militia transport.

"You look kind of familiar," Gen'aris commented as she took her seat and strapped in.

"We met on Feros," the man replied, "back when I was on active duty. Ethan Jeong, the liason officer."

The senior scientist's face lit up. "Ah! How nice to see you again! You're retired now?"

"More or less."

Meanwhile, Liara and Kaidan took the rear seats. "Expecting someone else?" Kaidan smirked as the transport lifted off.

Liara scowled in response. "I haven't been able to talk to her since Saren's attack."

The smirk changed to a more serious expression. "She's not in a talkative mood. Her brother died in the Embassy attack two years ago."

"I know."

"She's been assigned to a training post back in Sol, teaching our best and brightest how the Geth and the Vex fight."

"The Vex are geth that allied with the Reapers, right?" The officer nodded. "How is she?"

Kaidan shrugged. "Honestly, I haven't talked to her in over a year. I heard that she and her mother aren't on good terms right now."

"Her mother?"

"She's an admiral. She called in some favors to put the captain's little brother on the Embassy Garrison detail. The captain blames her for getting him killed, and her mother says that she should have been there to protect him."

Liara grimaced. Guilt tearing apart a family was never pretty.

Kaidan leaned in closer. "You really care about her, don't you?"

Now Liara blushed. "Y-yes," she stammered.

The man leaned back, a melancholy expression crossing his face. "You're lucky, doctor. You have a way in. I sure as hell don't."

"What?"

He sighed. "I had a crush on her too, back when I was first assigned to the Normandy. But I knew it would never go anywhere. We have laws against fraternization," he explained bitterly as Liara stared blankly, "'For the purpose of maintaining good order and discipline,' two service members in the same command structure can't be involved with each other."

"I don't understand," the doctor murmured.

"One way or another, there would be a difference in rank and authority. In the military, we can't tolerate any suggestion of favoritism. If she used her authority to order me around more or less than anyone else in the unit, that would get us in trouble. But with Shepard, even if we were in different units, she would never start anything with another military member."

"But I'm not military," Liara finished.

"Right," Kaidan nodded. "That's why I'm saying you have a way in. She might be more open to you."

Liara's eyes narrowed. "So you're just giving up on Shepard? How do I know you're not trying to sabotage me?"

"That's not who I am," he snapped. "I know I don't have a chance with her, but I would like to see her happy again. As long as she smiles, I can live with that."

Liara looked away, lost in thought as the transport flew on.

* * *

The door opened, and the group of four stepped out onto the dig site. "Doctor Gen'aris?" a technician called out. "Follow me."

He led them over to a couple poring over a portable terminal in a tent. "Doctor Benson? The experts from the Hypathia institute are here."

The man turned around and grinned through his beard. "Ah, so glad you could join us," he said with an extended hand.

"Pleasure's all mine," Gen'aris replied. "Doctor Richard Benson, was it?"

"That's me alright," the man laughed as he shook Liara's hand. "And where are my manners? This beautiful young lady is Orianna, my assistant."

"Try babysitter," the woman said, standing up from the keyboard. "I swear, he would forget to breathe if I didn't remind him."

"Why do you think I keep you around?" the boisterous scientist chuckled. "But you're not here for a family sitcom. Here, let me show you."

"You didn't say much in the contract," Liara recalled.

"I wished to avoid having one of my colleagues hearing about the discovery and being hounded for answers before I had them," the man explained as they walked. "Substantiate, or suffocate, as we say."

"Or in other words, publish or perish," Gen'aris remarked.

"I would have preferred not to contact anyone else for that reason, but alas, our Prothean experts are not as learned as those in your society. We are unable to sufficiently translate the Prothean language for our purposes."

"That part is a real pain in the ass," the asari agreed. "We took centuries to fully learn the Prothean language, but you guys have pretty much just started translating."

"That is correct. But this is more than just simply Prothean language. We uncovered an ancient computer, and we are trying to interface with it. Doing so has proven to be quite difficult."

"You found a computer system?!" Liara exclaimed.

"Oh we found much more than that," the doctor laughed as the group crossed the top of a hill. "Take a look."

The group stopped. Liara's eyes popped open at the sight of massive structures that had been buried underneath tons of dirt.

"By the goddess…" Gen'aris gasped.

"Yeah, this is what we found deep under the original dig site that my old colleague Jacob Sterns started. It took me a long time to get clearance to come and finish what he started."

Kaidan stiffened, and Liara looked at him questioningly. "Professor Jacob Sterns of the Martian Institute?"

"That's him," Benson nodded. "Welcome to the Sterns Dig Site."

Kaidan's mind raced ahead before making a decision. "Doctor T'Soni, as I recall, we both know someone who can perfectly understand the Prothean language. Maybe we should go get them."

Liara instantly realized who the officer was referring to, and her heart leapt in her chest. "Absolutely! She could really help us out here."

"You have an expert on hand?" Benson clapped his hands excitedly. "Wonderful! Please bring them here! I would love to have their input!"

"Major, I'll take Doctor T'Soni with me. I'll leave Doctor Gen'aris in your capable hands."

Major Jeong nodded as the two began sprinting back to the transport, then stiffened as Benson's assistant sidled up to him and began whispering into his ear, his eyes holding a faint greenish tinge.

 _Codex: Silent Cartographer_

 _While Alliance policy regarding Mass Relays near their territory is prompt removal and relocation, such a policy is ill-advised when dealing with the Citadel. The natural inclination to otherwise destroy those relays was argued against by cooler heads who proposed an alternative._

 _The premise was simple: the Relays restrict potential enemies to known routes of travel. Destruction of the Relays would deny the Alliance a potential vector of information, as well as make things more difficult should the Alliance try to call up the militia fleets in the event of an all-out war. Instead, a plan was made to place sensors and communications equipment around them._

 _The Silent Cartographer Project is restricted to relays known to the Citadel races for security purposes. Approaching inactive relays would reactivate them and alert the Citadel. In addition, there is little reason to place sensors around them._

 _Codex: Thermal Superconductor_

 _This highly secretive element serves as the primary armor for the Alliance military flagship, the Olympus. The unique qualities of the material are combined with a complex and multi-faceted support infrastructure to create an armored hull that is functionally invincible to any weapon except direct antimatter exposure._

 _Where an electrical superconductor can allow massive current flow with negligible resistance and heat generation, a thermal superconductor allows near instantaneous and uniform heat distribution throughout a block of material. For example: applying a blow torch to a steel plate would create a hot spot, a result of non-uniform heat distribution. Attempting the same to a plate of this material will heat up the entire plate at the same rate, and much more slowly due to the vastly increased amount of material to absorb the energy._

 _Backed by a high-efficiency cooling system, sufficiently large and thick plates are rendered immune to any form of energy weapons. Uniquely, even acute gamma ray exposure does not affect the material. Only hardlight blades, antimatter, and tremendous shearing impacts can inflict any kind of physical damage. The former are what is used to cut and shape the material once it is molded, and only in small amounts._

 **I might have had a little too much fun describing the destruction of an entire star system in this chapter.**

 **Say, what's going on with Ethan Jeong?**

 **Obviously, this was an alternate version of the Arrival DLC. That was an evil trap that EXALT sprang on the Reapers, wasn't it?**

 **Next chapter, you get to see the Olympus in action. In particular, you get to see it fire its main gun.**

* * *

 **When I do timelines, I make it a point to separate them into various specific entries. My rule of thumb is no more than a paragraph, or five sentences, per entry. This is to make sure I leave enough about the event up to the reader's imagination, and it gives me generous maneuvering room to tie those events into the story later.**

 **Also, it forces me to break things up and avoid the "wall of text" effect that can drive some people away. Paragraphs are your friends, people.**

 **Once again, I stress that when you write, you want some degree of ambiguity to give a story that sense of mystery and anticipation that keeps drawing readers back for more.**


	52. Genesis and Genocide

**For everyone wondering why I didn't update last week, all I can say is I hate weekend duty. For an explanation, google "Revenge of the MX Officer."**

 **EDIT: I'm having fun watching the North American LCS. I'll be really happy if either Flyquest or C9 takes wins the Spring Season.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Fifty

 **The Olympus, CNO Office**

Hackett rubbed his forehead, poring over the mass of Intelligence reports from Director Moore. From time to time, he glanced up impatiently at the old-fashioned analogue clock mounted on the wall next to his door. After nearly two years since the Alliance retreated from Council space, the entire military was on edge, waiting for the first blow from the Reaper threat. But more than that, he was waiting for Shepard to arrive.

After invoking his former CO's name, Captain Alenko only had to mention a single additional word for the fleet admiral, and now Commander in Chief, of the Alliance military to get onto the same page: Protheans. A large buried Prothean compound directly under the site of Saren's attack? No way that they weren't connected. Considering that the original Beacon had held information regarding the Protheans and their war with the Reapers, there was a good chance that there would be additional actionable, albeit ancient, intel on the Reaper threat.

Potentially, Shepard was the only individual in the galaxy with the capability of accessing that intelligence. Of course, he wanted to confirm everything face to face with Dr. T'Soni and Captain Alenko, which was why he hadn't ordered Shepard to head directly to Eden Prime. Or rather, it was one of the reasons.

Despite her current emotional fragility, Shepard remained one of the few individuals in the Alliance that he was absolutely certain he could trust in regards to the potential threat of EXALT. Being a Jaeger, she was immune to mind-reading, and therefore immune to being compromised. She was also one of the most loyal officers he knew of.

And unlike even Captain Alenko, he had managed to account for nearly every second of her career in the military. Without a doubt, she was the best candidate to investigate the threat, perhaps even following up on Agent Lawson's trail.

And perhaps, with a clear objective and mission in front of her, she could push past the pain of losing her little brother.

He looked up as Captain Chen poked her head through his door. "Sir, Captain Alenko has arrived with the asari. Captain Shepard's transport will arrive in about one hour."

"Thank you," he acknowledged before dropping his head back down to the reports.

 **The Olympus, Local Space**

"By the goddess," Liara gasped as the militia transport approached the gigantic structure, her face all but glued to the viewscreen.

"Amazing, isn't it?" Kaidan asked with a smile.

"It's…I just…how in the galaxy did your people build something this big?" the scientist wondered.

"With a lot of time, patience, and resources. That's all I'm authorized to say."

A minute passed as they approached the appropriate docking bay, and then Liara came up with a new question. "You called it the 'Olympus,' " she recalled, testing the word out. "For something like this, that name must be very significant."

"In our history, there's a race called the Ancient Greeks. Their civilization was one of the most influential in in our history. 'Olympus' is a place in Greek mythology. It referred to a giant mountain where their gods lived."

 _Mountain of the gods,_ the asari thought to herself as the transport settled against the docking clamps. The giant ship certainly merited such a name. While she was a humble individual, Liara had long taken pride in the vast accomplishments of her race. But something of this scale made her reconsider how much the Asari had really managed. The Alliance was, after all, far younger than they, yet their power and achievements beggared the rest of the galaxy.

She received more proof of this as she followed Kaidan down the ramp to greet their escort. Around her, the docks were filled with various ships, including the silhouettes of the infamous Alliance Dreadnoughts and Carriers. She looked on in awe, to the amusement of the Marine escorts, as Kaidan pulled her forward.

"By the way Liara, this place isn't a space station like the Citadel. The Olympus is a mobile battle station."

The asari scientist's eyes popped open even wider. _"This thing can move?!"_ she nearly shrieked.

Kaidan chuckled. "Of course it does. Why wouldn't it?" he said, enjoying the look of consternation as the archaeologist attempted in vain to imagine how much force it must take to move the titanic ship. It was the nonchalance of his response that floored her, as if it was normal for something so large to be capable of independent movement.

 **Unknown Space**

They glided through space, propelled both by engines and the machine equivalent of wrath. They had suffered a grievous insult, one that they had been unable to repay in kind. It was that indignity that spurred them to this course of action.

An observer might have thought it odd that machines could be capable of anything resembling emotion, or would fall prey to a desire for revenge. But the Reapers were no mere machines. For eons, they had reigned supreme, culling the galaxy as was their wont, in pursuit of alien goals unknown to all others. The ancient intelligence that guided them had surpassed challenge after challenge, cycle after cycle, suffering losses at times, but always prevailing in the end.

But never had a race inflicted such injuries in one fell swoop. The machines knew, from their endless experiences, that those responsible would be celebrating such a victory. And they intended to tip the scales the other way.

Perhaps the humans believed themselves invincible, secure in their armaments and their hidden colony worlds, confident that they would be able to repel any assault. With how successful they had been, they could hardly be faulted for that mindset. And it was always better to be hidden than to be fortified. But once found, it is difficult, if not impossible, to hide away once more.

And today, the Reapers looked forward to proving that fact.

 **The Olympus, Docks**

Shepard stiffly walked down the ramp, waving off the escort and moving toward the tram system with barely a word. The most she could feel at the moment was minor irritation, which any soldier familiar with an abrupt change in orders could understand. She'd been pulled from her post at Titan, one that had served as the only source of anything approaching enjoyment she'd had since the last attack on the Citadel. Being assigned to serve as head instructor for the Predator Corps had enabled her to bury herself in her work and push past the grief. She resented being pulled away from a comfortable routine, or what passed for routine as a senior officer/special operations instructor.

But she didn't have it in her to care much at all beyond the disruption. So she listlessly leaned against the tram wall as the car sped off down the rails toward the command section. A distant more rational part of her contemplated why she was being called over. Whatever the reason, it was likely not due to her status as a Jaeger. She would have been requested through Cerberus communications. More likely, it had to do with her extensive history with Citadel Space. A third and more personal reason could be due to the Fleet Admiral's personal connections to the Shepard family. After all, the orders had come direct from his office.

The door slid open, and she walked down the long passageway to flag country. Most of the offices were occupied, which was unusual for the command section. Unlike in the days prior to the Alliance military, most general or flag officers were able to find plenty of excuses to vacate their "assigned" offices and spend time with their fleets or divisions.

"Captain!" Her eyes snapped toward the familiar voice.

"Kaidan?"

"It's nice to see you again, ma'am," the other officer said, walking over with a hand extended. And for a moment, Shepard could forget about two years ago.

"You can call me Erin now," she shook his hand and smiled reluctantly, "seeing how you're a captain as well."

Kaidan shrugged. "Eh, it just doesn't feel right. You were my CO, and you were the one who actually ran the Normandy."

"Same old Kaidan," she noted as they started walking towards Hackett's office. "So why am I here? I assume you have something to do with it."

"I think Liara could explain better," he gestured as they entered the doorway.

"Shepard!" The asari in question shot to her feet.

Shepard blinked. "Not that I'm complaining, but I thought official policy was to keep outsiders from knowing about the Olympus."

"I decided to make an exception to that," the Fleet Admiral replied as he rose from his desk. "Welcome back, Erin."

"Let me guess, I'm leaving my post at Titan, aren't I?"

"And returning to Eden Prime for a bit," Hackett confirmed. "As Doctor T'Soni and Captain Alenko have explained things to me, Saren's original attack site was directly over a buried Prothean ruin. The archaeological institute that Saren conned into giving up the location is currently running an excavation operation of the site, and they would like someone with a perfect understanding of the Prothean language."

The senior captain blinked again and pointed a finger at herself wordlessly.

"Yes that's you, Shepard," Liara nodded. "When you interacted with the AI Vigil back on Ilos, it showed that the Beacon gave you perfect knowledge of the Prothean language, well beyond anything I've ever seen. I think you're the best chance we have of accessing the ruin's computer systems and making sense of them."

"Liara and Dr. Gen'aris were contacted and invited to Eden Prime as outside consultants by the Martian Institute," Kaidan explained. "I was tapped as their escort since you were on Titan."

"Okay…" Shepard trailed off, "but you could have probably told me all of this by electronic correspondence, sir."

Hackett sighed. "I could have, but I couldn't trust that the information wouldn't have leaked out."

"Wait, are we talking about a security breach, sir?" Alenko interrupted.

"Worse than that," the admiral shook his head. "Shepard, after I sent you and Miranda off on your missions, she contacted me with some concerns. She ran into a…Dr. T'Soni, what was he?"

"A drell, retired assassin named Thane Krios," the asari recalled.

"That sounds about right. This drell assassin had apparently run into another Cerberus agent who killed an asari Hegemony sympathizer later on. He was watching Dr. T'Soni's residence, waiting for Miranda to show up."

"Sounds like someone was sloppy if you ask me," Shepard commented. "Leaving witnesses alive?"

"Thane said he fought the man, and felt like the other assassin wasn't even trying to kill him," Liara volunteered.

Shepard scowled. "Kai Leng," she growled.

"Someone I should know about?" Hackett asked.

"Sir, Agent Leng is Ghost, another one of the Jaegers," Kaidan explained. "He is…how should I put it…their premiere wet-works operative. He's also psychotic and bloodthirsty, but very good at killing people."

"And why would he have let Mister Krios live? I assume that on an operation like that, he would have orders to ensure that there are no witnesses."

"More than likely, Krios impressed him," Shepard answered. "Leng is a rabid attack dog, but he respects people who can stand up to him."

"Hmph, maybe I need to have a word with Director Harper about his staffing criteria," the admiral mused. "But to continue, Miranda brought up that it didn't make sense to have that asari sympathizer killed. From an intelligence standpoint, it's better to watch and wait, leeching information that could have been used to find other sympathizers or Hegemony holdouts. She implied that there was some kind of high-level infiltration within the Alliance."

"And you must have found proof," Shepard finished.

"Actually, you found the proof, Erin. That rogue psionic that you fought on Omega? Turns out he was the long-lost son of a retired Navy officer, Commander Ronald Taylor. Funny thing was that when I tried to have OSI bring him in for questioning, he was found dead in his apartment just hours before my agents would have arrived. From the looks of it, he was drunk and fell down the stairs."

"You think his death was faked." Kaidan noted.

"It is awfully coincidental that someone who had all but burn out his liver function drinking away a divorce and the loss of his son took a header down the stairs right after his name came up with the OSI."

"Or someone didn't want him talking."

"My thoughts exactly. Now right around the time of the Embassy attack," Hackett ignored how Shepard stiffened up, "I talked to Commander Pressly, and he mentioned that the Normandy had received a data burst from Miranda that later turned out to contain two experimental logs: one on former Captain Vyrnnus, and one on Saren Arterius."

Liara gasped. "What?!"

Hackett paused. "I was the commanding officer of the St. Helens during the Second Contact war. The prisoners were housed on my ship, in _my_ brig. But somehow experiments like this took place under my nose," the admiral thumped his fist on his desk.

"Sir, what kind of experiments?" Kaidan queried.

"Brainwashing."

Liara's mind raced ahead. "Then is this why Saren attacked the Citadel?"

"Most definitely," the admiral sighed. "The logs talk about efforts to instill a deep hatred of the Alliance, strong enough to entice him to seek out any kind of aid in destroying us. For the life of me, I can't fathom why any Alliance personnel would do this. But if they weren't Alliance, it would make more sense."

"So my mother…our commandos…all those people who died because of Saren…"

"Dr. T'Soni, I want to assure you that the Alliance had no part in those events. This is the work of traitors. We will find out who did this, and we will make them pay."

Shepard's brow furrowed. "Sir, those files came from Miranda's investigation, and she was in the Terminus Systems. Why would she find them over there?"

"That is what really concerns me," Hackett responded. "I was talking to Dr. T'Soni before you arrived about Miranda's investigation. She sent the drell and a human expatriate named Kasumi Goto to look into a man named Donovan Hock. I understand he runs a massive human criminal empire out there. This is what Miss Goto managed to bring back. The implications are deeply disturbing. A criminal organization based in galactic no-man's-land running operations within the Alliance Military prior to being established out there in the first place? With access to advanced brainwashing techniques or psionic abilities? There is only one organization that I could think of with those capabilities: EXALT."

 **Sol**

The normal proceedings of the day were swept aside by a sudden flood of contact reports on the edge of humanity's home system. The lines exploded with frantic voices requesting directions as the contacts came into view, and then those requests turned into shouts of enemy fire. It was this confusion that Admiral Ines Lindholm awoke to.

"What the fuck is going on?!" she demanded as she stepped onto the bridge of the _Kilomanjaro_ , ignoring the blaring of emergency klaxons.

"Ma'am," the dreadnought's captain ran over, "Sol is under attack!"

Lindholm froze. " _Under attack?_ " she whispered. The idea was borderline blasphemy. No one outside of the Alliance knew the location of Earth, and there were no Mass Relays leading through Alliance territory. With billions of cubic light-years to search, it was impossible for any enemies with no intelligence on their territory to locate humanity's cradle.

And yet they had. There were unknown hostiles in the system, sweeping toward the sun. And it was now on her to defend the system.

The admiral shook her head. "Call in backup! I want the rest of our detachments to make their way to Sol right the hell now!"

"Ma'am, the network is receiving reports of other attacks on other colonies!"

 _A combined attack across our territory?_ Lindholm considered her next call. "Call the Olympus for reinforcement!"

 **The Olympus, CNO Office**

Kaidan felt lost. "But we defeated EXALT during the Ethereal War."

"We never destroyed them," Hackett clarified. "General Summers and Dr. Vahlen told me that the old mission reports said their headquarters was devoid of anyone except active shooters. The leadership had probably skedaddled. But after dismantling their operations, X-COM had bigger things to worry about at the time than a wild goose chase across the planet searching for a secret society on the run."

"But why are you telling us all this, sir?"

"Because I want you to keep everything secure. I don't know what their goals would be, but we have enough problems with the Reapers approaching. We don't need to have to deal with high-level treason on top of it. And whatever the Martian Institute discovers there would be of enormous interest to anyone. That's why-"

Alarms blasted down the corridor. Shepard and Kaidan whirled around, instinctively reaching for their sidearms as Liara shrieked in surprise. After a second, Hackett stabbed his finger at a button on his desk. "Report!"

 _"Sir, emergency transmission from the First Fleet! Sol is under attack!"_

The faces of the two junior officers paled. Hackett's only hardened. "Request targeting information, and execute fire plan Repulse."

"What's going on?!" Liara frantically demanded.

"The Olympus is going to war."

 **Sol**

The machines were beginning to take serious losses from the defending force. But they surged ahead, seeking the safety of occupying defending territory. They knew their opponents weapons were capable of tremendous collateral damage. If they took the area, the defenders wouldn't dare fire on their own people.

It was expected that this system would be defended, though the arrogance of the humans would imply that they would be unlikely to station a sizeable amount of forces here. They believed no enemy could locate this place. And they believed themselves to have struck a serious blow.

This would show them otherwise. The Reapers had spent considerable time making their way here and to other human systems. With the knowledge that the cursed humans had eyes all over the visible relay network, the machines had taken the back roads, so to speak. Out of sight, out of mind, they had crept to the edge before beginning the long journey into the heart of the Alliance. The great overriding intelligence that guided them had calculated the locations of some Alliance colonies, and so other groups were detailed to them.

But this host of machines was the largest. Unlike the other groups, they were not meant merely to harass and destroy. No, their purpose was to claim. To take hold of the home system of these arrogant apes would be tremendously demoralizing, and a fitting revenge for the injury inflicted one standard cycle before.

They made speed toward the inner planets, approaching the largest gas giant in the system. But something _rippled_ into view.

They did not know what to make of it. The object was suddenly there, where previously it had been empty space. It was large, metallic, and artificial.

And it was pointed directly at them.

 **The Olympus, Bridge**

Captain Stefanie Chen leaned on the rail as she eyed the tactical readout. "Sir, we are in position. Our fire pattern should eliminate 80% of the hostiles."

 _"What about the First Fleet?"_

"They have been notified. Our other units will evacuate the firing trajectory long before the burst reaches them."

Through the screen, Hackett nodded. _"Then let there be light."_

Chen nodded. "Full power to the main gun! Fire!"

Deep within the titanic flagship was its central power core, powered by antimatter annihilations. It was an exceedingly dangerous mechanism with which to generate power. The process of annihilation produced tremendous amounts of ionizing radiation, gamma rays with energy levels of over 500 thousand electron volts. On its own, one single gamma ray photon could not do much damage, if any at all. But quantity has a quality of its own. The gamma rays generated were harvested by a complex assembly of gamma ray lenses and absorbing thermal superconductor plates. The plates heated up and passed that energy off to the cooling mediums, which went into turbines to generate power. There were other secondary mechanisms that generated power, but around 86% of the core's electrical capacity came from the thermoelectrical process.

Much of the process was quite similar to the mechanisms of nuclear reactors. They were similarly dangerous and energetic sources of power housed in highly durable structures that could safely convert radiation into electrical energy. But the antimatter core was different in two ways.

One, of course, was sheer size. In the days prior to the Ethereal War, the average nuclear reactor could generate around four hundred and fifty megawatts of power, enough to supply ten major cities. The original plans for the Olympus had incorporated three such reactors. But various problems had arose involving the safe disposal and resupply of the required nuclear fuel. Instead, once research had progressed far enough, those plans had been scrapped, and the reactors instead replaced with the antimatter system, which was theoretically capable of as much as half a percent of the average stellar output. The actual output was far lower, by orders of magnitude, to prevent the ship from slagging itself. However, it was no exaggeration that when ignoring issues like resupply and maintenance, the Olympus could answer the entirety of Earth's power needs by itself at full operational power.

But operational power is not the same as design power. And the core had been designed as more than a mere power source. This was the second difference. Unlike a nuclear reactor, the antimatter core was designed as a weapon. More specifically, it was the most powerful energy weapon humanity had ever produced, one that literally rivaled the power of stars.

The core actually ran the entire 40 kilometer length of the massive warship. This was a physical necessity to accommodate the lenses that could safely redirect the energy radiated from the antimatter reaction. In power mode, the lenses redirected the gamma rays to the various baffles that captured and converted the energy into heat. But in weapon mode, the lenses reoriented to align and focus the emissions in one single direction, forming a staggeringly powerful gamma ray laser.

Now, with the reaction at full power, the core chamber doubled as a lasing cavity, forcing the gamma rays to interact with the stellar helium used to to cool the core and stimulating the release of more gamma rays of very similar wavelengths and energy levels, multiplying the yield by a factor of ten. The column of gamma rays streamed toward the bow aperture, ready to stream out and bring the wrath of humanity against the oncoming flood of ancient machines.

The column encountered a slight obstacle, one that was part of the weapon design. Extremely powerful magnetic armatures acted on some of the helium gas to form a lens of sorts that diffused the beam, bending and spreading the energy. With the speed of the beam, the deflection was very slight. But it was more than enough to change the laser to a conical wave of gamma rays that covered the vector inhabited by the doomed machines.

And with that final mechanism, the Olympus unleashed one of the most powerful forces in the cosmos: a gamma-ray burst.

Ionizing radiation has deleterious effects on nearly all solid materials. Living tissue suffers genetic and metabolic damage while non-living material becomes harder and brittle. Conductive surfaces build up an electrical charge that can damage electronics behind them or grounded to them. All these effects struck the Reaper host head-on as the wave passed them by. Sensors shorted out. Control systems went haywire. Drive cores and engines died, leaving massive machine hulks rushing forward on pure momentum. Heat built up on fragile components and vulnerable surfaces before causing them to explosively sublimate. A wave of explosions erupted, traveling towards the rear of the mass of ships and serving as the only warning those further back. With the electromagnetic interference from the burst, they had no warning before the blast of radiation destroyed their electronic sentience.

Midway between the orbits of Uranus and Saturn, the First Fleet and the Reapers fortunate enough not to be fired upon paused to look in awe and horror as the armada of machines ceased to be anything more than a navigational threat. Across the galaxy, the overriding intelligence realized that it had made a grave and costly error. With that kind of weapon at their disposal, the humans could no longer be engaged en masse. It would have to move up its plans for the rest of the galaxy and dispose of them before engaging this most powerful of foes.

* * *

Hackett's office was silent as the four inhabitants stared at the readout on the wall in astonishment, and in the case of one blue-skinned scientist, sheer terror. "Goddess Athame…"

Hackett looked back at the screen on his desk. "Launch the Zero Fleet, and begin cleanup operations. I'm declaring a state of emergency, and I want a conference with the Joint Chiefs, the Alliance Council, and Directors Moore and Harper. However the Reapers found us, I want to know, and I want to know it right the fuck _now!"_

 _Codex: Project GENESIS_

 _Ironically named after a mythological event that refers to the creation of all life, this project was aimed at doing the exact opposite._

 _Antimatter weaponry had been speculated on and theorized about since the discovery that Elerium can passively generate antimatter. But questions abounded on how to safely create large amounts and harness the energy. After a breakthrough in 2012 where scientists created silicon-based lenses capable of slightly refracting gamma ray beams, a feat which physicists had considered impossible, development post-war turned to such things as more precise imaging machines and more effective radiation shielding for reactors. It wasn't until Dr. Richard Tygan proposed the use of gamma-ray lenses in weapons research that Antimatter weapons became a serious research venture._

 _Dr. Tygan's team of scientists and engineers at the Cydonia Research Institute had to solve several problems including safely containing such intensive gamma radiation, creating equipment that could last under such extreme conditions, and designing a weapons system that could make use of it. The result of Project GENESIS is the Gamma-Ray Superlaser incorporated into the Alliance military's flagship, the Olympus._

 **Yes, the name of the weapon is a homage to Gundam Seed. But where this is a self-contained system, the ZAFT superweapon was a phased array mirror that somehow harnessed the energy of a nuclear charge before focusing and amplifying it. Also, this weapon has a much longer range and greater power yield.**

 **And it is fully mobile. Now imagine having to plan your military space campaign around a weapon like THAT.**

* * *

 **And so the Alliance loses its most important defense, which is one that every commander prizes above all else. Location. If your location is unknown, you're usually safe. But if the enemy can find you, it's only a matter of time.**

 **On the other side, this is the kind of surprise you can get when you don't have sufficient intelligence on your enemy's capabilities. The Reapers rushed into Alliance Territory without scouting it out and having incomplete or outdated information on their tactics or weaponry. Granted, this fuckup isn't their fault. The Alliance has done a stellar job of hiding their true strength, and by eliminating the Mass Relays, any scouting action takes too long to be worth the return trip.**

 **The Reapers will mount attacks throughout Alliance Territory to occupy their attention and prevent them from giving a shit about the Council Races. But we can guess what Shepard's next mission will be, right?**


	53. Plans within Plans

**It's been a while, hasn't it? Thanks to a combination of severe writer's block, research and extrapolation, and a military deployment, I hadn't finished this chapter until now.**

 **I had planned out a very VERY cruel April Fools Joke, but my timeline wouldn't have allowed it and I just got pushed back by two months worth of delays. So it will just be a wham chapter later on. Teaser: it involves character death.**

 **Read and review!**

Chapter Fifty-one

 **Unknown location**

Changing locales, no matter how many times he had do/ne so over two centuries, was always a pain in the ass. In particular, they had ensure that the central communications hub link remained intact, with none of the precious Quantum Entanglement Pairs disengaging and dropping critical leaders of the organization out of contact. But it had proven necessary, and so here he was, two years later.

In hindsight, it had been a dangerous risk to position himself on such a well known nexus of criminal activity in the Terminus Systems. He had been more concerned with building up his front organization at the time, and such exposure had merely been the cost of business as it were. But now, that front would come under heavy investigation by both Alliance and Citadel agents. More specifically, the asari, and Admiral Hackett.

It had taken a while for his agents to learn what led to the ill-fated mission to infiltrate his mansion. Dr. Liara T'Soni, daughter of Matriarch Benezia and Matriarch Aethyta, and the new Shadow Broker. It had been a tremendous surprise to discover her hand in the whole affair. Such an inexperienced, naïve, and lovesick girl entrusted with the vast resources of the most powerful intelligence organization in Citadel Space? He shook his head at the thought. No, more likely Matriarch Aethyta was running things, and grooming her daughter in the process.

The game of espionage and intrigue was something well beyond the experience of a young archaeologist. Besides, it also neatly explained Aethyta's new power bloc on Thessia.

He frowned as he waited for the technicians to finish the last linkups. Aethyta's machinations with the Asari race could prove problematic to the organization's ultimate goal. Asari military independence would make them rather disinclined to side with the Alliance, and thus ensure the supremacy and safety of humanity within the galaxy. In light of that, the Reaper invasion was quite a boon. With second-rate technology, they would still suffer quite a few losses in terms of military craft, nullifying their two-year buildup under their warmongering figurehead Irissa. He snorted in amusement. How quaint, relying on ones enemies to do the work for him.

Of course, the real question was the Turian Hierarchy. They had been building themselves up for far longer, and they would be much better prepared to withstand the Reaper onslaught, having a military that was designed for a contest of arms. The Reapers would know this as well, so they would devote a considerable amount of their forces to beating them down. In his estimation, the turians would hold their forces together for a very long time, probably turning their part of the impending conflict into a stalemate. So much the better if it went that way, the better to grind down their military and make them easier to subvert.

The Salarians? Not even worth considering. Perhaps the Reapers would send a force to Sur'kesh, and that might be all. Then again, why squander such a target early on? Better for them to wait for most of the Salarians to retreat back to their home systems, in accordance with their cultural aversion to direct conflict, and _then_ besiege it, trapping them away from the rest of the galaxy.

As for the Batarians? They shouldn't even register as worth pursuing. Their fledgling government was barely worthy of the name, due in no small part to his own efforts.

Ultimately, the goal was a galaxy united under the banner of the Alliance, with humanity safe and secure on top. It was said that the Romans conquered the world in self-defense. Now humans would take over a galaxy.

The head technician stood up and looked at him. "Link is secure. We are online."

"Excellent," he noted. "Next, I want you working on the servers and archives. But first, you've earned a couple days off."

"Appreciate it sir," the man grinned. "Boys, time to party!"

The technicians raced out to enjoy their hard-earned freedom while he remained behind and locked his office door. Then he sat at his desk and activated the system. Despite his confidence in his men's work, it was still a relief to see the successful connection. After almost two years off the grid, he fully operational again, and able to connect with his colleagues.

He was surprised to find an alert in the queue, and even more so that the man in question answered his signal immediately.

"Sergey?"

 _"Oh finally!"_ the man exclaimed through the line.

"What's the problem?"

 _"The Reapers attacked Earth."_

He blinked. _What?_ Earth had been attacked? But how… " 'Attacked,' past tense. I presume that means they were fought off."

 _"Hackett moved the Olympus in and blew them away. The bigger problem is that Earth wasn't the only attack. They showed up at some of the other colonies."_

This was unexpected. The Reapers were not supposed to have any information on human territory other than Shanxi, Eden Prime and Elysium. Those would have theoretically been the first targets. Somehow though, they had acquired knowledge of Earth. That changed things drastically.

 _"By all accounts, Earth was supposed to be a decapitation strike. They attacked with almost eight hundred ships, and over half of them were of the same type as Saren's Reaper. The rest were much smaller units that were probably intended to bury themselves in the planetary infrastructure and prevent themselves from being targeted due to collateral damage potential. Reports from the militia and the Eight and Ninth Fleet reinforcements were that their groups had much more of the smaller types, and they didn't stick around for very long."_

"Do we know how they managed to locate Earth in the first place?"

The man shrugged. _"I'm an admiral, not a scientist. Hackett is calling an emergency meeting of the minds, so the eggheads should have a few theories soon enough. In the meantime, most of our fleet units are being called on to evacuate the exposed colonies. The Olympus is holding at Sol for now. The idea is to defend Earth and potentially one other system if the Reapers try another big attack. Not likely to happen, but you never know."_

"And what of the Fifth Fleet?"

 _"Hackett apparently has some special mission planned for us. I don't know what it is."_

"Keep me in the loop, Sergey."

The transmission terminated, and he reached for his desk phone. If the Reapers were already making moves against the Alliance, it was time to accelerate his plans.

 **Eden Prime, Transport Shuttle**

"Still nothing?" Kaidan asked.

"No!" Liara snapped. "I don't understand it! Dr. Gen'aris wouldn't just stop answering my calls like this! She knows I need to be kept updated on the dig site!"

"All Alliance colonies are kind of in a state of emergency right now," Shepard reminded them. "That could be disrupting communications."

"Also, Eden Prime is known to the enemy," Kaidan added.

The transport swerved suddenly, throwing the passengers hard against their restraints. _"We're under fire! Hang on to your lunch!"_ the pilot called.

"Under fire?! What's going on?" Shepard demanded.

 _"Someone's shooting at us with lasers from down below!"_ A high-pitched rippling shriek that both officers recognized as massed laser fire rang through the hull.

Kaidan blinked. "Lasers…" he repeated dumbly. "Why would the militia be attacking us?"

"Save it!" Shepard snapped, keying her radio to the standard channels. "This is Captain Shepard of the Alliance Navy! Cease fire! We are friendlies!"

Liara looked on with trepidation as Shepard screamed her message another three times into the radio without response.

 _"Either they're not hearing us or they don't care, ma'am!"_ the pilot helpfully informed her. _"Coming up on the coordinates! Fire's intensifying!"_

Both officers shared a glance. The enemy was clustered around the Prothean dig site. Predictably, Shepard decided the course of action.

"Crack the ramp," she ordered, hitting her quick release. "We'll jump down on your flyby! Then get out of range and hold for our signal!" Across from her, Kaidan followed suit.

 _"Ma'am, we're at two hundred meters of altitude!"_

"Just get us as low as you can!"

The aircraft swooped down at max power, its path bottoming out at thirty meters above the ground. Shepard gritted her teeth. "This is going to hurt a lot," she warned her fellow captain, not noticing his slight blush from his position, wrapped in her arms as she backed toward the open ramp. From her seat, Liara glared daggers at the man. "Jumping in three…two…one…clear!"

They tumbled out, and Shepard closed her eyes and wrapped both of them in a purple shielding aura. For all of two seconds, Kaidan had a blurry streaked view of the skyline before they smashed into a tree. The unfortunate plant exploded into splinters as their momentum carried them through it. Next came the very sharp deceleration as they slammed into the ground, digging a good sized furrow before coming to a stop.

They untangled themselves, and Kaidan took the opportunity to massage his cheek, from where he'd bruised it somewhat on Shepard's abs. Meanwhile, the red-head quickly checked her radio before hitting the transmit key. "This is Shepard. We are on the ground. Heading to the dig site."

 _"Copy, ma'am,"_ The pilot's relief could be felt through the line. _"We're heading back to orbit until your signal. I'd rather not get slagged hanging around too close to the surface."_

"Alert our ride and see if they can pass along a message to the _Olympus_!"

 _"Will do."_

"Geez, you've got a hard head, Kaidan," Shepard complained as she massaged her stomach and her lower back.

Kaidan glared as the world slowly swam into focus. "Was that standard hot-drop procedure, or do you just enjoy skydiving without a chute?"

Before the woman could answer, her instincts triggered and her shield flared as three lasers screeched through the air. When they died off, she was already dashing forward at the three militiamen, intent on incapacitating them and taking their weapons.

Kaidan similarly reacted, reaching out and compelling the closest one to whirl around at some imagined sound, and causing the other two to dodge away from his muzzle sweep. By then, the two supersoldiers had closed the distance. Shepard grabbed one by the collar of his Carapace Armor and simply threw him at a tree fifteen feet away. The armor protected him from the worst of the impact, but the man was easily concussed and out of the fight.

Kaidan opted to grab the rifles of the other two and pull them together, resulting in the almost cartoonish sight of the militiamen bouncing their helmets off each other and falling to the ground, unconscious.

As they policed the weapons and restrained the men, Shepard's radio crackled. _"No joy, ma'am,"_ the pilot of the transport reported. _"Comms are down locally. They can try moving out of range to get the message through."_

"Forget about it," Shepard ordered. "It would leave us down on the planet with no backup if things get too hairy. We'll just transmit once we're all out of here!"

 _"Copy!"_

The senior officer hefted her rifle. "You know the place, Kaidan. Lead on."

Kaidan smiled slightly and bowed while carelessly gesturing in the direction of the site. "Right this way."

 **The Olympus, Secure Communications**

"You've had twenty-four hours to go over the reports," Hackett growled without preamble as he walked to the front of the now-crowded room of staff officers. "Tell me you have something."

On the screens, doctors Vahlen, Shen, Core and Tygan glanced at each other, silently debating who would speak first, while the entire network of Alliance commanders and civil leadership looked on.

Tygan cleared his throat. _"I would remind everyone that this is all preliminary speculation, but we do have a theory as to how the Reapers were able to find our colony worlds."_

 _"So everyone remembers our standing order to shut down and relocate any relays in our territory, right?"_ Shen asked. _"That is probably how they did it."_

 _"Explain,"_ Director Moore ordered.

 _"I hate to point out the obvious, but the Mass Relay network is a network,"_ Core interjected. _"Funny thing about networks: they track themselves. Some aspect receives status updates on the other parts in order to keep current. And most networks keep records so the operators can examine things for security, streamlining or other purposes. The point is, everything is time-stamped. What we're thinking is that our policy of making changes to the relay network allowed the Reapers to see what part of the network our territory occupied. For example, when we first activated the Charon Relay, it would have alerted the rest of the network that it was functional and synced with it. Then when we deactivated and relocated it, it would have sent another alert that it was disconnecting, but the network would still have its last known position to trace."_

 _"So by trying to safeguard our people, we told the enemy exactly where we are,"_ a councilor hissed before the sound of her fist hitting the wooden desk followed. _"Damn it!"_

 _"That is overstating the situation,"_ Tygan corrected her. _"Only colonies in systems containing or close by to a Relay's original location are directly compromised. I understand that efforts are underway to evacuate the colonies in question."_

"We're consolidating our defenses," Hackett noted, "but that just reduces the number of targets the Reapers have to attack."

 _"If I'm not mistaken, it also frees up some of our defensive units to operate in a more proactive role,"_ Moore added.

 _"You mean send out scouting parties?"_ another council member asked.

 _"That would prove to be a waste of time and effort,"_ Director Harper countered. _"The vastness of space provides the enemy with all sorts of places to hide from our forces. I think we would be better served sending those units abroad."_

There was silence over the network. _"I fail to see how it would be advantageous for us to send valuable military units away from our territory, depriving us of our fighting force,"_ the Alliance Chairman wondered.

 _"We know that the Reapers are an enemy of all inhabitants of the galaxy, including the Citadel Races. We also know that compared to us, they are the softer target, in terms of military capabilities and exposure. And the Reapers know this as well."_

"So we send fleets to help them out?" Hackett demanded. "Is it even worth it?"

 _"We do share a common enemy in this instance."_

"Not what I meant, Jack, and you know it. You said it yourself that their forces aren't as capable as ours. Not only that, we don't know their doctrine. We don't know how to account for their performance in the field. If we're going to fight together, which I assume is the point of sending our forces to aid them, I want to know that they can hold their own. If we have to sacrifice our strength to prop them up, we just might get screwed in the long run."

 _"Even if their forces should prove to be too fragile, we can still prolong their existence and string out the Reapers, bleeding their forces out as we move our people to safety. Also, I might add that allowing the Reapers free reign to 'harvest' the Citadel races augments their own forces due to indoctrination. No matter how you look at it, it is advantageous, and I might even say critical, that we intervene beyond our territory."_

Someone coughed loudly behind Hackett, and he turned to look at the offender. "Something to say, Admiral?"

The brass parted to allow the man to step forward. "Sirs, Admiral Mikhailovich of the Fifth Fleet. I've heard rumors out of our research division that we're working on a weapon that directly counters Indoctrination." Hackett scowled.

 _"Calling it a 'weapon' is a rather crude designation, admiral,"_ Dr. Vahlen sniffed. _"Project Thorian is more of a simple countermeasure to prevent our researchers from becoming Indoctrinated while they examine captured Reaper technology."_

 _"Does it work, doctor?"_ the Alliance Chairman asked pointedly.

 _"So far, none of our technicians have exhibited signs of Indoctrination,"_ Core answered. _"Not once over the course of three years. All of the individuals in question were informed of the test program, and have volunteered to operate under collective isolation for up to a decade, with no direct contact beyond their group. The Cydonians and a few Muton observers have been conducting tests on personnel weekly to ensure there are no unusual changes to biology or mental state. The Cydonians are obviously immune seeing how they're mechanized, but we've discovered that the Mutons are also fully immune."_

"We've only known about indoctrination for six or seven years. How can you say that they're fully immune?" Hackett challenged.

 _"Cerberus has conducted testing with prisoners and criminals of many human demographics,"_ Harper explained. _"It was a simple matter to expand it to Muton prisoners. Control tests with human subjects locked in isolation chambers with Reaper technology present showed that they succumb to psychosis anywhere from a few weeks to several months. The results are uniform across the board. The Mutons, on the other hand, have not even once demonstrated symptoms. I am satisfied with the experiment thus far, and have given the green light to move beyond mere preventative measures into De-Indoctrination."_

"So we have something that we could use to prevent the Reapers from getting anything of value." Mikhailovich noted. "What if we offered it to the Citadel instead of military force?"

Dr Vahlen cleared her throat. _"Admiral, consider this analogy. The Reapers see us and the Citadel as, for want of a better term, sustenance. According to the Protheans, their harvest cycles are used to create more of themselves out of the races they Indoctrinate and conquer. So far as we know, Indoctrination is crucial to this. If they can't do so, then we are not viable resources for them. We would be tainted. A farmer does not harvest tainted crops. He destroys them."_

 _"If I may ask,"_ another councilor interjected, _"why the Reapers would focus on the Citadel instead of us, as you seem to assume? Logically, wouldn't the Reapers want to deal with us first while they have most of their strength?"_

"They tried to do just that," Hackett answered. "The main force of their attack was aimed at establishing a territorial beachhead in Sol. The _Olympus'_ main gun took care of that, and it sends a message to the enemy that a massed attack force on any target we have an eye on is a bad idea. But smaller attacks can be fended off by a combination of our militia and centralized military forces. There is no easy answer for the Reapers now that they have to account for our flagship and its defensive capabilities. Their best bet against us is massing all their forces on one target, but there's nothing critical enough and vulnerable enough to be worth it. In the absence of that, they would go after the Citadel because they are weaker and an easier target."

 _"So we send them a fleet and they would just accept our aid? If I recall correctly, our relations with them are in tatters at the moment."_

 _"When they are attacked by the Reapers, I doubt they would be inclined to look a gift horse in the mouth,"_ Moore replied dryly.

 _"We could always sweeten the deal,"_ Core added. _"Inoculating their best fighters against compromise by the Reapers could win them over."_

"Wouldn't they use that opportunity to finish their Reaper-enhanced super soldier project?" the Fleet Admiral asked.

Core smiled wickedly. _"They can try."_

 _"What is this? What super soldier project?"_ the first councilor demanded.

 _"We can discuss that later,"_ the chairman cut her off. _"As this is all preliminary, I want some kind of confirmation. You have that derelict Reaper, and I do recall reading a report saying that the Reapers are networked. Perhaps you can dig into that."_

 _"We are already testing that angle, sir,"_ Tygan replied.

 _"Excellent. Admiral, directors, finish consolidating our defenses, and come up with a plan of action for sending our forces abroad. Dismissed."_

Hackett stood scowling at the wall as the connection terminated and the brass began filing out of the room. "'They can try,'" he repeated. "Why does that not make me feel any better?"

"You really don't like the guys in Cerberus, do you, Steven?"

He turned to look at Admiral Mikhailovich. "I can't stand Harper's methods."

The junior man shrugged. "If they work, I'm not about to complain. That Project Thorian sounds pretty damned useful."

"Well, Sergey, speaking of Project Thorian, you mind telling me who's been spreading those rumors you heard?"

 **Eden Prime, Dig Site**

Out of a desire to avoid killing Alliance personnel, the two super soldiers had managed to evade a rush of militia headed in the direction of their landing point as Kaidan led the way. Finally, they crept over a ridge, and Shepard gasped at the massive sprawling complex excavated from beneath the scorched ground left by Sovereign's guns.

"Holy shit…"

"Yeah," Kaidan agreed. "From what I heard, the research team just uncovered the place. They want your help accessing the computer systems. We'll need to find them."

Shepard noticed movement in the distance, near another ship parked on the far edge of the dig site. "Is that them over there? I see a bunch of people with lab coats and boxes."

Kaidan looked in the direction she indicated, and frowned. "That's Doctor Benson, but I thought he'd be a prisoner or something. The militia are moving those crates, and driving that forklift. What is going on here?"

He heard a sharp surprised intake of breath. "Kaidan, who is that woman next to that guy with the beard?"

The junior captain squinted as his enhanced eyes refocused. "That's Benson's assistant, Orianna."

"Why the hell does she look just like Miranda Lawson?"

* * *

"Everything is loaded and ready!" Benson announced, rubbing his hands together with glee as he walked up the boarding ramp. "Oh I can't wait to open this sarcophagus! To think what a live Prothean specimen could mean for us!"

Orianna rolled her eyes, mentally counting down the minutes until she could hand off the talkative and absent-minded professor to someone else. Meanwhile, militia Major Ethan Jeong walked up stiffly.

"No sign of the intruders," he reported.

"Incompetent as ever," the woman growled, glaring into his greenish-tinted eyes. "Well whatever." Her eyes flared purple. "Your services are no longer required. Dismissed."

The man saluted robotically, and then he and his subordinates pulled out their sidearms and jerkily placed them next to their own temples before firing.

Orianna had already diverted her attention elsewhere. "Our guest?"

 _"Perfectly cooperative, ma'am,"_

"The explosives?"

 _"Primed for detonation."_

"Send the signal and let's get out of here."

* * *

"They all just shot themselves!" Kaidan breathed in shock.

Shepard stood up. "They're going to get away! We have to-"

The world flashed white, and the two soldiers were flung back off the hill as the exposed dig site exploded. In a matter of microseconds, a sprawling fifty-thousand year old complex, and anything of value within, was reduced to rubble.

 _Codex: The Olympus_

 _Forty kilometers long and twenty kilometers at its widest point, this massive behemoth is the crowning achievement of the Alliance military, serving as both central command and superweapon. It took forty-six years to construct, and cost over three times the Gross Domestic Product of the United States in 2010._

 _With a dedicated crew of over one and a half million technicians, administrators and maintenance personnel, it is perfectly accurate to call the warship a mobile city. The Olympus is intended to function in deep space to ensure the safety and security of the Alliance military's upper echelons, thus preventing a decapitation strike. In the event of an attack on the Alliance, the ship is also equipped with portable Wormhole Gate technology that allows it to instantaneously travel anywhere within a range of forty thousand light years. The ship is protected by Thermal Superconductor armor, a Segmented Energy Shield system that can withstand megaton-yield nuclear blasts, and the unofficial Zero Fleet, which is docked, housed, and maintained internally._

 _note: the Olympus does not house the Alliance Council. Civilian leadership primarily meets and resides aboard the ark-ship Pangea._

 **Up next, Shepard gets her crew and heads off to Palaven.**

 **If anyone has ever watched Stargate Atlantis, the logic against using Project Thorian on everyone is the same as why the Hoffan Drug was a bad idea for the civilization that created it. Damn I miss that show.**

 **Javik will not make an appearance in this story. He might however be mentioned post-mortem. This story took four years longer than canon to reach this point, and I believe that in canon even his stasis pod was beginning to fail. Consequently, a reduction in power draw plus damage from Orianna's hasty extraction of his casket will preclude him from being a badass of any kind in here.**

 **And speaking of Orianna, did anyone see that coming?**


	54. To Defeat Monsters

**Holy shit, this was a pain in the ass to write. Sorry about the wait. Computer troubles, a 12 to 12 work schedule, severe writers block, and research and analysis held this one up a lot. On a side note, completely disassembling a laptop is easier than I thought it would be.  
**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Fifty-two

 **The Olympus, Docks**

"Damned if that ain't a pretty ship," the massive cyborg officer commented. "No cannons on it though."

"It's a dippy transport, sir," Lieutenant Colonel Bailey reminded his superior, using the shorthand for 'diplomatic.' "Kind of hard to convince people we don't want a fight if the ship is bristling with armaments."

"It's another useless trash hauler if shit hits the fan," Colonel Nicholas 'Havoc' Parker growled.

"I'd contest its status as useless if it can bring us cooperation against our enemies," Rear Admiral (lower half) Anderson countered as he walked up.

"So he finally hung a star on you, eh?" Havoc smirked.

"Laugh it up, Nick, and I'll have a word with the commandant."

"I'll just do something to get a demotion and get right back to being a field officer."

"The more things change…" Anderson chuckled. "How you feeling, Bailey?"

"I'm just glad command is giving me a second chance, sir."

"That and he's probably happy to head into the field," Havoc grinned, patting his subordinate on the shoulder with his artificial left arm. "A desk is no place for a marine."

"You know that the court of officials doesn't _have_ to punish or demote you, right?"

"Are you two going at it again?" Hackett muttered as he approached with Admiral Mikhailovich and Vice Admiral Shepard in tow. "Ambassador Udina and his crew should be along shortly. Your guys will be part of the escort force."

"I know how to read orders," Havoc said sardonically. "Anything I should know?"

"We are going to be spending time as forces on loan," Mikhailovich announced, "helping out the Citadel races against the Reapers and the Vex. Within reason of course. That presumes the Ambassador can get us permission to operate in their space and coordinate with their forces."

"Stupid question sir," Bailey said. "Why would the Ambassador need an escort? I thought the whole point of moving him to Shanxi was to ensure his safety as well as an open diplomatic channel."

"Call it diplomatic leverage," Hackett replied. "Udina said that if he's willing to be physically on the Citadel, it's a symbol of trust between our governments. Similarly, assuming he can sweet talk them into agreeing to our aid, they'll have representatives of their own on Shanxi again. And that buys us goodwill we can leverage with their people, or so the theory goes."

"Once giant alien squids show up and start blasting things to shit, I'd think they'd be happy to have other people with guns show up," Havoc countered.

"Would we be happy if they showed up at Earth?" Mikhailovich pointed out. "Bottom line is that there's no point antagonizing potential allies like that, even if they're a bunch of weak aliens."

"Sergey," Hackett cut him off warningly. "Chances are you'll be heading into Turian territory. They make up the bulk of the Citadel's military, so hitting them would force them to split off and go home. Also, according to Director Harper, their Council representative is the least likely to refuse our help."

"What's with the other two pols?" The cyborg colonel asked.

"Councilor Irissa and her base of support are strongly anti-human, while Councilor Isheel is more of a narcissistic operator," Anderson explained. "Look out for number one, fuck the rest, etc. If it weren't for her isolationist policies, she might be happy to see us. But it's a loss of face thing. Makes them look weak."

"Bottom line is that the Turians are the key," Hackett continued. "They are the closest to us in terms of how we think. We make a good impression on them, they can potentially bring everyone else on board."

"Is the ambassador talking with them now?" Bailey queried.

"No. All he's done so far is request a face-to-face. I'm thinking that yours will be needed, Bailey. You and other familiar and friendly faces. You, Anderson, Captains Shepard and Alenko will accompany him."

"So will I," a feminine voice announced. Everyone turned to regard Dr. T'Soni as she walked up. "I'll go with them."

Mikhailovich frowned. "Not to be rude, doctor, but this would be official Alliance business."

"As Admiral Hackett already knows, my father and I have control over the Shadow Broker's network," Liara replied coolly.

"Back up a second, 'Shadow Broker?'" Havoc repeated.

"The Shadow Broker is, or I should say was, a third-party spymaster. A one-stop shop for information in Citadel and Terminus space," Hacket clarified.

"And when we took over his network, we used it to back up Councilor Irissa," Liara finished. "It's pretty much an open secret by now. I can make it perfectly clear to that bitch what will happen if she doesn't bend over for us."

Anderson blinked in surprise at the venom in the asari's voice.

"You don't like her at all, do you?" Mikhailovich noted with mild amusement.

"I have my reasons," the archaeologist confirmed, letting her icy gaze momentarily linger on Hannah Shepard.

"If you're willing to support us, I wouldn't say no. But it's the ambassador's call."

"I think he'll see the benefit," Anderson assured him.

"You know, I'm still waiting to hear the part where this concerns my boys," Havoc interjected.

The fleet admiral cocked his head. "We're here to tell you to behave yourself, colonel. I haven't forgotten about your habit of 'creative reinterpretation.'"

"I told you last time would come back to bite you," Anderson grinned.

"Hey whoa! Is this 'pick on the cripple' time?" Havoc protested.

" 'Crippled' now? What happened to all those times you said you could beat the shit out of us with one hand?"

"I can still pull that off, 'trainee Anderson!' Hell, I could do it left-handed!"

"You always say that. How about you prove it?"

"And there they go again…" Hackett muttered. "Feel free to join me in my office when you're finished, David. Sergey, good luck with him."

"Does that mean I can send you the bill for the property damage?" the Russian admiral muttered.

Only the two women were left as the male officers paired off, with the vice-admiral moving to lock eyes with the blue scientist. For the longest time, the two stared at each other, and then Hannah cocked her head slightly.

"I lost a husband," she breathed in a whisper. "I lost a son." She looked down and shook her head, attempting and failing to will her tears away. "I can't lose her too…"

"Admiral Shepard," Liara began only to be cut off as the admiral abruptly grabbed her shoulders.

"Keep her safe," the proud Alliance officer begged, before turning and walking away, leaving behind a speechless asari.

 **Palaven, Cipritine**

Conventional wisdom held that attacking the Turian home system was tantamount to suicide. As the race that held firm against the Krogan Rebellions, as the race that composed more than sixty-five percent of the Citadel combined military, as the race who possessed training parity with the Alliance itself, any lesser power would think twice before assaulting the centerpiece of the Hierarchy.

This had encouraged, if not a lazy, a lacksidaisical attitude for the defense forces stationed around Menae. For who would be stupid enough to challenge the might of the Hierarchy? Let alone on their home turf?

Rather, the question that should have been asked was 'who could be powerful enough to do so?' In more recent times, it might have been common to answer with the Systems Alliance. But as powerful as they were, no strategist took that possibility seriously. They held little territory, and were heavily outnumbered and outsized by the Citadel. And they were more inclined to avoid a war, if only to deny information on their equipment and tactics, much to the consternation of intelligence officers.

But those who were truly in the know would have had another answer, and it was this one that arrived to do the unthinkable.

A massive host poured from the Mass Relay, the barrage of incoming fire obliterating its defenders before the force streamed toward Palaven.

This force was considerably different from the ones that had assaulted the colony worlds of the Alliance a mere week prior. It was larger, by a third, than the ill-fated Sol fleet. And it did not merely contain Reapers. More than eight hundred Vex destroyers descended on Cipritine, shielding the far more valuable and powerful Reaper craft from the desperate onslaught of counterfire.

 **Menae, Fleet Headquarters**

"86th Detachment is not responding!"

"The _Herrun_ reports forty-three percent force casualties!"

"Our ground batteries are being overwhelmed! They can't intercept them all in time!"

"How far along are the evacuation efforts?!" Primarch Fedorian demanded.

"Estimate only twenty percent of our people have reached the bunkers!" a frantic major replied. "New traffic! Enemy tangos are targeting the bunkers with focus fire!"

"Sir, our ground troops are placing priority on the large landers!"

"Belay that order!" General Victus barked. "Our defenses won't last long enough to make much of a dent in those! Tell them to aim for the small units! Take out as many of them as they can before they're destroyed!"

Across the room, General Orinia was having a similarly trying time. "What is holding up our response group?!"

"Ma'am, the enemy is screening off our fleet! We can't get around them to approach the capital!"

"Then tell our commanders to force their way through! We have to get more people down there to buy the ground pounders time!"

"Request denied!" Admiral Cyrin snapped. "We cannot fire on the planet! That's our people down there as a backstop!"

 _"But the enemy dreadnoughts are inside the city! They're right on top of the bunkers! We have to-oh spirits!"_

Fedorian looked up as Cyrin used her authority to bump the transmission onto the tac screen, and switched the audio to the PA system.

 _"What the hell are th-those?! Are they…they're geth! It's Saren all over again! We're being invaded by geth!"_

Everyone froze, and chatter died off. Then General Victus snatched up a microphone. "Colonel Nessik, I need to you to calm down and describe the enemy exactly as you see them. Tell me what weapons they're using!"

 _"Sir, th-they're firing some kind of blue beam weapons! They just…Captain Hissa! Oh…"_ the sound of vomit came through the line. _"It b-burned a hole…just straight through…"_

"Energy weapons," Fedorian breathed, locking eyes with Victus.

"Vex," the general replied.

 _"W-we can't…I-no! No! Nooo!"_

"Colonel? COLONEL!"

There was a clattering sound, and the line became much quieter, as if the officer had dropped the microphone. _"Spirits…I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm SORRY PLEA-"_ Everyone in the room twitched as a loud screeching sound cut off the man's screaming.

As the signal status changed to LOST, a technician held a hand to her headset. "One of our bunkers is compromised! Enemy forces entering!"

"Reaper and Vex forces," Victus shook his head. "If they're targeting and invading the bunkers, they're planning to indoctrinate the civilians!"

"There's supposed to be thousands of people in each of those!" Orinia gasped.

"They'll all be compromised, or worse. They'll be turned against us!"

All the top brass took a moment to consider the horrifying scenario in full. The soldiers of Palaven were fighting on home soil, and most were reservists living with their families. Faced with the possibility of having to shoot their own loved ones as indoctrinated slaves, the potential for the breakdown of their forces was terrifying. There would be no better way to shatter the morale of the military than to force a wholesale slaughter of their own civilians.

Victus recovered first. "Orbital strike! Take out the Reapers down below!"

"WHAT?! General, you're insane!" Cyrin snapped. "Belay that order!"

"Admiral, either we fire on the planet and destroy the bunkers and the Reaper forces, or we risk the complete breakdown of our entire military!"

"We don't even know if that's their goal!"

"Can we even take that chance?" Orinia demanded. "If we lose our military, we lose any chance of defeating the Reapers!"

"Orbital bombardment is illegal! It goes against all our laws!"

"The law isn't a suicide pact," Fedorian cut in sharply. "Mark the compromised bunkers, and notify our ground forces to pull back. Then fire on them, and the Reaper dreadnaughts on the surface."

The admiral hesitated. "Sir…"

"Every second we wait is another second the enemy has to Indoctrinate more of our people and grow their forces!" Victus yelled. "Tell them to open fire!"

Cyrin swallowed, and then raised her microphone.

 **Palaven, Cipritine**

The order was repeated three times before the officers on the dreadnaughts and cruisers acknowledged, or deigned to refuse. Later on, those who did refuse would be excused a court martial. That would be of scant comfort to all involved.

It came as a surprise to the Vex and the Reaper blockade force when the next two salvos from the defense fleet utterly missed them, streaking past by kilometers. That confusion turned to the machine equivalent of horror as reports came from the ground assault, and some turned to bear witness.

Under normal circumstances, the bunkers in question would have been impervious to the rain of kiloton-yield kinetic slugs. They were constructed on geologically stable ground, and were designed with self-contained kinetic barrier defenses rated for dreadnaught bombardment. The contract had specified a minimum of five weeks holdout capability against a determined and sustained planetary assault, the likes of which occurred during the Krogan Rebellions.

But these defenses were decades old, and the enemy host consisted of units with energy weapons that partially or completely bypassed kinetic barriers, and sapient starships who disrupted those barriers through sheer mass. With the strongest countermeasure out of play, only physical resilience stood between the Vex and the Indoctrinated foot soldiers, and the refugees within. And the age old wisdom of high-mobility modern warfare held true: the best defense is to not be hit. Camouflage was lost, and they were battering their way through the doors to reach the vulnerable civilians within.

But in doing so, the invaders entrenched themselves into known positions. Without complete knowledge of the Hierarchy's defense plans, the Vex and the Reapers had been forced to landfall in order to accurately assault the bunkers. The Hierarchy itself had no such restriction.

The first wave of projectiles crippled or outright destroyed four grounded Sovereign-class Reaper dreadnoughts, and thirteen smaller destroyers, both Reaper and Vex alike. The second wave obliterated the bunkers that reported invaders, as well as the civilians sheltered within.

Caught off guard by the Hierarchy's scorched-earth tactic, the invaders now faced a dilemma. In light of the Turian willingness to shell their own positions, a structured ground campaign was clearly out of the question until the space-faring units could be dealt with. But a ground campaign was the only way to reliably replenish their assault forces and shatter the enemy morale.

The guiding machine intelligence quickly crunched the numbers, and made its decision before the third round of tungsten rain made landfall.

The Reapers began abandoning the surface, scrambling to lift off and evade the kinetic shower for the safety of open space. Meanwhile, the Vex scattered into the cities in roving squads, preparing to mount an insurgency that would strangle the Hierarchy's war effort in a street-to-street battle across the capital of Palaven.

More Vex would insert themselves in the coming weeks, serving to occupy and restrain the defense fleet to the homeworld while the Reaper force pulled back and met with additional reinforcements to attack the other colony worlds. Worlds that lay beyond the protection of the Hierarchy's fleets.

For there is another truism of war: no enemy can be strong everywhere.

 **Menae, Fleet Headquarters**

Victus's hands shook even with all his upper body resting on them to steady himself against the communications console. The enormity of what he'd brought about...it was almost too much to take in. The analytical side of him examined the hologram as the computers displayed the damage zones and the estimated civilian and military casualties. Around him, a flurry of communication brought with it disbelief, outrage, and horror from the men and women in arms at the capital.

"…what have I done…?" he whispered. "…that we would come to this…"

"The enemy forces planetside are withdrawing," Admiral Cyrin announced with a combined voice of amazement and disgust.

For a brief moment, the senior leadership of the Hierarchy breathed a sigh of relief. And then the full impact of what that relief had cost hit them hard.

Victus ignored the comforting hand of his wife on his shoulder as he pondered his next action. Then he made his decision. "Primarch Fedorian, I hereby resign my commission and office in the Hierarchy." A series of gasps ran through the room. "I will submit myself to the war crimes tribunal for-"

"No."

Victus was caught short. "Excuse me, sir?"

"I refuse to accept your resignation," Fedorian said wearily. "You are offering it because you feel responsible for this," he gestured at the hologram. "The order was mine, not yours. The failure is mine, not yours. I must answer to every turian in the Hierarchy for the actions of the military, as I am the one who has the final say."

"But sir-!"

"The Hierarchy needs you," his voice became stronger as the man resigned himself to his own choice. "It needs officers who are willing to consider all options and act as necessary. I don't know if I would have given that order had you not suggested it, and I pray to the spirits that will forever remain a mystery. What I do know is that you have the strength and the mind to best defend our people…in my stead."

Eyes widened all around. Surely he wasn't suggesting…

"I, Crassus Fedorian, resign my position as Primarch of Palaven, and submit myself to the justice of the Hierarchy," the aged commander intoned solemnly. "The chain of command currently designates General Adrien Victus as my successor, and so it will be." Fedorian summoned up the remnants of his dignity, and leveled his piercing gaze at the stunned newly appointed Primarch. "May the spirits guide you true, Primarch."

With that, he tore off the rank insignia and placed it in front of Victus before turning on his heel and walking himself to the brig, leaving a silent command center behind him.

 **Citadel, Council Chambers**

Sparatus swore vilely at the notification from his omnitool. Of all times for the Hierarchy to experience a change in leadership, it had to be now!

"Trouble at home?" Irissa called with the slightest of smirks. She would be enjoying his anguish, he noted darkly, considering her failure to oust him through politics. He looked back at the message, and found the perfect cure for that. Oh he would enjoy this.

"I wouldn't call it that," he replied, stowing his omnitool and smoothing his clothes as they waited for the Alliance emissaries.

His words did indeed wipe the smirk off her face, to be replaced with a gaze of suspicion. "Then what would you call it?" In the corner, Councilor Isheel was also leaning forward with interest.

Sparatus was spared having to answer as the door slid open and the C-Sec escort marched in ahead of Ambassador Udina and his security detail.

"Councilors, it is good to see you again," the human greeted them.

"The pleasure is ours," Irissa lied through her teeth as she looked on in surprise at Dr. T'Soni's presence.

"You requested this meeting," Sparatus smoothly took the lead, "but you didn't specify a reason. May we know why you are here?"

"Absolutely," Udina nodded as the C-Sec guards took up positions along the wall. "Earth was attacked by the Reapers."

Silence. Nobody in the room could have expected such a bald admission on the part of the Alliance that their home system had been discovered and assaulted.

Isheel coughed. "I presume they were driven off?" Sparatus noted with satisfaction that there was none of the denial rhetoric that had characterized her tenure as a councilor. The salarian had insisted multiple times, despite proof even from the STG, that the Reapers and the Vex were mere fabrications on the part of the Alliance.

An old scarred and familiar soldier in the group chuckled. "More like wiped out, miss," he commented, drawing a glare from the ambassador for speaking out of turn.

"And you are…"

"Master Gunnery Sergeant Sean Finn," the man answered with a smirk. "I was here during the attack two years ago."

That drew attention. The turian councilor looked more closely at the man and realized that he was indeed familiar. Not as recognizable as Dr. T'Soni, or the four senior officers accompanying the ambassador, but certainly one to remember, given the scar over his left eye.

"The Reapers made the mistake of attacking Earth head on," Captain Shepard explained. "We made them pay for that."

"Indeed? I trust there's a reason for you to inform us of this," Isheel said.

"We share a common enemy," Udina cut in, attempting to regain control. "The Alliance is aware that your people are similarly under attack by the Reapers. For instance, Palaven is under siege, if the intelligence reports are to be believed." Sparatus winced. Having a foreign power casually reveal their penetration of his territory stung quite a bit.

"Domestic security is our own affair," Irissa replied haughtily.

"That it is," the ambassador agreed. "But we are offering you our aid against them."

"What kind of aid, exactly?" the salarian queried suspiciously.

Admiral Anderson stepped forward, clearing his throat. "The Fifth Fleet is available to provide additional military strength to deal with the Reapers. We have a few successes against them under our belt."

"I'm not so naïve as to think that such aid comes without a cost attached to it."

"Merely that we join forces against the Reapers," Udina continued smoothly. "and share intelligence as required to fight our common enemy."

"Then you would have us squander our strength to help defend your colony worlds?" Isheel challenged.

"We can handle ourselves," Anderson answered, unruffled. "Our domestic security remains our own affair."

Sparatus noticed that Irissa was looking at her omnitool as Isheel took the lead. "And if we refused your aid?"

"That's your right," the diplomat conceded.

"And we are to believe that you would just take your fleet back home?" the salarian snapped while Irissa's skin turned a much paler shade of blue. "That you wouldn't use our current turmoil to scout out our territory to your advantage?"

"Considering their intelligence gathering capabilities, I think they have already done so long ago," Sparatus noted dryly. "Ambassador, I have no objection to your offer of aid, but it is not my decision alone to make."

"So you would just invite them in simply because there is little left to compromise?" As Isheel attempted to appear outraged, Irissa looked up and met Liara's stony gaze.

"No. I would invite them in because my new Primarch has asked me to seek their aid in throwing the Reapers off Palaven," the turian countered. "I have my orders. I only ask that you help me carry them out."

Irissa looked down and away while Liara's expression changed to a triumphant smirk.

"I refuse to further jeopardize our civilization by inviting possible enemies to interfere in our affairs!"

"In case you haven't noticed, that's already happened," Sparatus retorted. "I don't know about you, but if the Alliance is offering to be on my side, I'd rather have them as allies, not enemies."

Isheel sniffed, and spun to regard her asari colleague. "What does the Asari Republics think of this proposal?"

Irissa looked up numbly, throwing her erstwhile ally for a loop. "The Asari Republics would be delighted to accept the Alliance's offer," she said in an almost monotone voice.

 _Whoa,_ Sparatus almost went slack-jawed in disbelief. Irissa, the anti-human warmonger, was willing to accept? What the hell?!

"Then it looks to be settled," Udina clapped his hands with a satisfied look on his face. "All that remains is to determine where the Fifth Fleet should go first."

The turian shook himself loose. "If you could, please send someone to Palaven. I believe you could do the most good there by freeing up our forces from the homeworld."

Anderson, Shepard, and Bailey looked at each other, and then nodded. "We'll do that," Anderson agreed. "Just let them know we're coming so they don't shoot at us on sight."

"I will let them know right away," Sparatus said, turning to leave.

"W-wait a minute!" Isheel sputtered. "We haven't taken the time to consider-"

Sparatus whirled around and glared. "Every _minute_ we waste listening to your drivel is an extra minute that my planet remains under siege by an enemy you have denied ever existing since you took office. I am in no mood to _take the time to consider_ your conspiracy theories while my homeworld burns."

Caught off guard, the Salarian was rendered speechless as Sparatus stalked off to bring the good news to Palaven.

 _Codex: Nicholas "Havoc" Parker (the Eternal Colonel)_

 _A veteran of the Ethereal War, he originally served as a Private First Class in the US Army, assigned to Armed Forces Europe in the Balkans. An excellent infantryman in nearly every respect, he was noted for having discipline issues which resulted in constant demotions from any NCO position he was promoted to._

 _While serving in a multinational task force in a barren section of Europe (supposedly as a punishment detail), he and his assigned squad were cut off from contact by the opening assault of the Ethereal War. Low on supplies and lacking transportation or radio contact with their base of origin, PFC Parker took "command" after the NCOs were killed in an encounter with alien forces._

 _The unit went native, creating a resistance with Balkan survivors that was cynically named the "Global Defense Initiative," or GDI. The title came to be considered a running joke before the resistance encountered an XCOM team responding to a terror attack._

 _Parker and his original squad of nationals were recruited into XCOM in recognition of their skills and contributions, and rapidly carved out a name among the XCOM elite as the Dead Six. Upon the conclusion of the war, Parker was the sole remaining operative as the rest left to rejoin their home nations._

 _The experience changed him, and led to him commissioning as an officer and rising to the rank of Colonel in command of the Alliance Predator Corps._

 _Note: Subject is a member of the Prometheus Initiative._

 **Say hello to our favorite maverick commando!**

 **I really had a hard time writing the beginning scene because I had so many characters to work on and use, but no clear plan for what I wanted them to do.**

 **This chapter was big on drama. The next one will dip back into some comedy, and more shout-outs.**

 **The Reapers didn't simply bombard Palaven into dust because that would make it no longer worth defending, freeing up the defense fleet for other duties. Remember that their goals are to divide and conquer, force their enemies to stretch themselves thin and tear themselves apart. And to reproduce by harvesting people.**


	55. When a Plan Comes Together

**I've been planning this chapter for a long time. I'm sure people will recognize the giant shout-out here.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Fifty-Three

 **Palaven, Hierarchy Field Command Post**

Out of any military force in the galaxy, no one had more experience in house-to-house street combat than the Turian race. So much of their wartime protocols revolved around citizen resistance and dealing with it, and even their newest greenhorns were run through urban combat training for two years before being given the opportunity to specialize into other disciplines.

But their history and training presumed that the opposition were those who lived in the area, and all that entailed. Instead, the Hierarchy military found itself engaging an enemy force with superior weaponry, little to no logistics, and an utter lack of organic vulnerabilities. Oh, and lest anyone forget, a unified networked command structure that operated at the speed of electrons passing through wires and circuitry.

And the Vex were not content holding positions and houses. No, they aimed to infiltrate areas still housing civilians who had not yet evacuated, or refused to. They also set up choke points and booby-traps for the turian expeditionary forces, rendering any efforts at making forward headway into reclaiming compromised areas near impossible.

It was this stark reality that Primarch Adrien Victus found himself contemplating as he conferred with officers who only recently had been erstwhile comrades. Now he was their superior, the man they looked to for approval, and the one they regarded as having the responsibility and the wisdom to consult on the actions necessary to liberate their world.

The whole of the Hierarchy looked to him for guidance, and he still questioned himself in the mirror every morning on such things like his son's pending assignment. How was he supposed to know any differently from the learned general officers he now oversaw?

For instance: additional Vex forces had made landfall in the past few days, bypassing the defense fleet simply by approaching at velocities lethal to any living being. Now they had to contend with larger ground units and even the beginnings of aerial harassment. Some were pushing for another round of bombardment from the defense fleet. Others decried it, and instead begged for more forces to be pulled from elsewhere to ease the burden on the home units.

There was an effort by the citizens to outfit aircars with munitions and use them to augment the Hierarchy's dedicated airborne forces. While he appreciated the thought, he and his subordinates agreed that it needed to be stopped. There was already enough chaos in the air without needing to add trigger-happy civilians to the mix. If anything, they would be better served using volunteer civilians to augment the corps of quartermasters and armament troops, serving as extra hands and freeing up the able-bodied and current soldiers for combat duty.

Another concern was the vulnerability of the other Hierarchy colonies. The very first thing Victus had ordered in regards to the defensive forces beyond Palaven was for them to withdraw as much as possible, falling back to military posts to consolidate themselves. Leaving them out in the standard piecemeal arrangement would leave them open to destruction by a determined assault by Reaper and Vex forces.

Many of those forces were en route back to Palaven right now. Every time Victus considered the abandonment of those colonies, it was agonizing to think of the civilians he was sacrificing. But it could not be helped. Palaven was their home. It held the bulk of the Hierarchy's population and industrial infrastructure.

The rest of the external fleets were dispersed at the discretion of their commanders to function as fast-response forces in order to delay the loss of those colonies as long as possible.

The Primarch shook his head and refocused on the situation. Until Palaven was pacified, they would be on their own. Hopefully, it would come sooner, rather than later, especially with the imminent arrival of Alliance reinforcements.

 **Palaven, Unknown Location**

The technician scratched his neck and turned to face the expectant officers behind him. "All set sir, though for the life of me, I can't get why you wanted us to strap a tank into the transport when you're just trying to get to HQ."

"Pays to be prepared, Sergeant," one officer answered, "right boss?"

"One step ahead of the game isn't a plan, Ace," Lieutenant Colonel Garrus Vakarian replied. "Two or three steps is a plan. Medic, start loading up the wounded into the carrier compartment."

"Yes sir!" the lieutenant snapped a salute and turned to start screaming at his men.

"And when are they going to get it through their heads to stop calling me sir?" Garrus muttered.

"Customs and courtesies," Ace replied.

"We're Blackwatch, we're in the field, we're surrounded by hostiles on all sides, and people are worried about saluting me?"

"Sense of normalcy, boss. Palaven isn't supposed to be hostile territory. It's home. Maybe it's just a bit of comforting routine for the men," the unit XO pointed out.

"It gets old real fast. Now I remember why I took that Spectre assignment."

"Get used to it. You're a brasshole now, remember? Especially since Colonel Hesker bit the big one."

"Thanks, I needed that reminder of the fact that we are short one Blackwatch Commander."

"Happy to serve, boss!" Ace snapped off a smarmy salute, which Garrus returned by raising a very rude hand gesture to the salute position.

"Go fuck yourself, Ace."

"Right here right now?"

Knowing better than to reply, the former Spectre merely rolled his eyes and walked off to help the medical team.

 **The Normandy, Bridge**

"The gang's back together again, eh?" Anderson mused, clapping his hands as he surveyed the room.

"Not quite, sir," Shepard replied. "Pixy isn't here, and neither are Kearing or Valeri, or Engineer Adams."

"Well Pixy is going to be the getaway driver for the Ambassador back on the Citadel if things go really pear-shaped."

"We also don't have the full entourage of outside contractors," Captain Pressly noted. "We're short a quarian, a krogan, and a turian."

"Maybe we'll pick up that last one after this. Everyone just be on your best behavior. No sense giving the turians a reason to get all pissy with us after that misunderstanding from two years ago."

Shepard, Bailey, and Silva grimaced at that reminder.

 _"We are within hailing range of Palaven and Menae, Admiral."_

"Transmit the authorization codes, EDI."

Approximately three minutes later, there was a tell-tale crackle of static from the bridge speakers. _"When Sparatus told me that the Alliance was coming, he mentioned a fleet. All I see is one ship."_

"We figured you had enough chaos to deal with in orbit," Anderson answered. "Besides, the Councilor briefed us on the current situation. You drove them off already."

 _"I wouldn't go quite that far…"_ the Primarch grumbled bitterly.

"Also, your people are probably on edge. The first thing they'd probably do if our entire fleet showed up here is open fire on us."

 _"Fair enough."_ A sigh cane through the line. _"I'm sending you landing coordinates. You'll be met and escorted to our headquarters. We can talk more there."_

"I look forward to meeting you in person."

 **Palaven, Unknown Location**

"Once we launch, I'm sure that every hostile is going to be homing in on this location," Garrus said, eyeing the men around him. "We'll be back for you with reinforcements. Your job is to give the enemy hell until we come back. Also, as much as I hate to say it, civilians are secondary priority. You've been briefed on Indoctrination, and you should know what to look for. Avoid contact with everyone else if at all possible."

Some of the soldiers shared grim looks with each other. None of them liked the idea of disregarding civilians in need, but there was no way around it.

"We are Blackwatch. We are the best turian soldiers in the galaxy. We all know how to follow orders, right?"

"Yes sir!"

"Then you are all ordered to survive!"

"Yes sir!"

Garrus nodded. "You have your mission, and we have ours. May the spirits guide us."

The soldiers stood and began to disperse. Meanwhile, Garrus turned and sidled over to his XO and the transport pilot.

"Nice pep-talk boss. Very inspiring," Ace grinned.

"I don't have a speechwriter, so sue me," Garrus growled.

"Hope you didn't eat anything, Colonel," the pilot laughed. "It's going to be a wild ride, especially if the reports on the comms are right."

"No points for making us puke, Wheels."

The captain laughed again and moved toward the cockpit.

"It's a good thing Talon's going to be out cold for this flight," Ace noted, "especially with Wheels on the stick."

"How is he?"

Ace dropped his cheerful demeanor. "His right arm is pretty much a total loss. He'll be on disability for the rest of his life, unless some medical miracle lets him regrow it. Maybe the Alliance might…"

Garrus's nostrils flared, though he said nothing.

"Medics are doing what they can. It'll have to be enough for now."

"Yeah."

 _"Hey you two going to get on board?"_

 **Palaven, Hierarchy Field Command Post**

"I know you!" Anderson exclaimed before the Primarch could voice a greeting.

"Excuse me?" the turian blinked.

"You were on Shanxi during the Second Contact war," the admiral clarified.

"Did we meet there?"

Anderson smiled sheepishly. "Yeah, I was the commando leader who raided your ground HQ. I remember right after I grabbed you and another turian, I went and tangoed with a biotic of yours."

Victus's eyes widened in recognition. "So you're the one who manhandled Orinia and myself right before Desolas's order to fire on the planet." Behind him, several ranking turian officers glared daggers at the admiral.

"First as enemies, now as allies," Anderson commented. "We might be familiar, but I don't know your staff."

"Introductions, then," Victus stepped aside. "General Nessus Orinia, one of our ground force commanders, and my fellow ex-prisoner." Orinia glowered at the Primarch, harboring dark thoughts for later that night. "Admiral Vasik Cyrin, Defense Fleet commander. Colonel Harrrel Vacinus, the intelligence officer assigned to our headquarters. And Padok Wiks, the STG liason. He arrived just before you did, at the behest of Dalatrass Linron."

"A pleasure," the admiral inclined his head. "You all know Captain Shepard, and Lieutenant Colonel Bailey."

"That we do," Wiks agreed. "Your exploits have made for quite the interesting reading," he said, extending a hand.

Shepard shook his hand. "You have me at a disadvantage then. The only STG member I know of is Dr. Solus."

"My colleague is…indisposed at the moment," Wiks explained. "Hence why I was sent here."

A round of glances indicated that everyone present knew exactly why that was so.

"I'm surprised Garrus isn't here with us," the admiral noted as they began to walk into the communications room.

"We haven't been able to reach him," Victus replied. "Blackwatch Headquarters hasn't been answering our hails. For the moment, we are operating under the assumption that their base has been compromised."

"We have a number of former Blackwatch soldiers who retired to Cipritine following their tour of duty," Orinia commented. "It's quite possible they were also compromised and indoctrinated, giving the enemy the precise location of their base. No doubt it would have been a primary target for elimination."

"Or corruption," Shepard growled. "I hope they weren't involved in the Culexus project either."

"That project was housed on one of the Union's research labs," Wiks volunteered. "It has since been discontinued."

"General!" a voice called out. Orinia snapped her head around.

"Yes?"

"We're receiving a hail from an airborne contact! Credentials are a match to Lieutenant Colonel Garrus Vakarian, Blackwatch Division!"

"Put it on the big screen! Vector an intercept, and have our pilots confirm their status!"

"I knew Garrus wouldn't die that easily," Shepard smirked.

 **Palaven, Cipritine**

Among the twisted hulks of the Reapers destroyed in the bombardment lay one that was merely rendered immobile, though still functional. It had moved to a low-power state, the better to evade sensors that could pick up electronic activity and play possum until an opportunity arose. In the meantime, the Vex landing forces would serve as guards and wards.

But now those wards alerted the Reaper, bringing its electronic sentience to full awareness. They had detected a number of craft converging directly above the Reaper, and one of those contacts was an individual known to be important to the Hierarchy military.

A swarm of Vex units took to the air while the Reaper increased the power from its generators and began warming up its laser cannon.

"Raptor Lead, this is Wheels! I have your boys on the scopes on approach vector two eight two! Gotta say it's real nice to have some friendly company in these parts!"

 _"Wheels, hold altitude and velocity. Do not deviate from your flight path while we confirm your identity. Over."_

"Understood!" Wheels turned to face Garrus in the radar officer's seat. "Not real friendly today, sir!"

"In case you didn't notice, we kind of got attacked by giant robot squids from space, and they really fucked up the capital!" Garrus called over the screech of the thrusters. "I wouldn't be in the mood for jokes either!"

"Killjoys! Whoa!" the transport rocked as it passed through a localized cross-wind. "Everyone buckle up! Weather looks unhappy!"

 _"Try not to rock this thing!"_ Ace called from inside the cargo bay. _"The medics have a hard enough job as it is!"_

"Don't worry boys! Turbulence has never brought down a plane!"

An alarm began blaring from the console, and the officers in the cockpit turned to stare at the threat display.

 _"Wheels, Raptor Lead! We have a shitload of hostiles coming up to meet us! Take evasive maneuvers!"_

Garrus rolled his eyes and began unbuckling so that he could race down to the safety of the armored vehicle.

"But, we got inbound Vex with target lock! And they bring down planes all the time!"

 **Palaven, Hierarchy Field Command Post**

"General!" Orinia turned towards the technician as they entered the communications room. "Enemy hostiles converging on Raptor Squadron!"

"I guess that confirms their identity," Vacinus muttered.

"Don't be so sure," Wiks cautioned. "We need confirmation that they are not indoctrinated or otherwise compromised."

Shepard and Anderson shared a glance before the admiral shook his head minutely. Now was not the time to bring up Project Thorian.

"We also need them to survive the enemy!" Orinia snapped. "Scramble additional forces! Priority is to safeguard that transport and escort it away from the fighting!"

"Raptor Lead reports visuals! Harpies!"

Bailey blinked and looked at the Primarch. "'Harpies?'"

"Small flying units," Victus explained. "They seem to be the Vex unit of choice for harassment and bombardment."

"What do you mean by bombardment?"

"They overload their cores and slam themselves into our vehicles and positions."

"Suicide units," Shepard summarized. "Great."

"Fortunately, they're pretty fragile in combat. The problem is hitting the damn things."

 **Palaven, Cipritine**

The captain in charge of the squadron clenched her mandibles as she led half her unit into the oncoming hail of Vex. With the sheer number that was attempting to close in on the vulnerable transport, their best hope was to distract them and have them retarget her far more agile and defensible fighters. Naturally, the enemy had determined this as well, and streaked past toward the much larger target. Raptor Squadron was picking them off with directed barrages of particle cannon fire, but nowhere near fast enough.

 _"Lead, Three! Some of the bastards doubled back around!"_

 _"Shit! Wheels! Incoming!"_

The Blackwatch pilot flicked his fingers over the customized kinetic barrier controls just as he twisted the left wing throttle control. The kinetic barriers blinked momentarily into existence before pulsing off the right wing, while the left side thrusters reversed direction. The net effect was to spin the transport around while maintaining its forward momentum to face the Vex pursuit force. And then Wheels squeezed the chin gun control, unleashing a dense hail of fire that obliterated the Harpies trailing the aircraft.

Raptor Lead blinked several times in disbelief. _"Did he just…what?!"_

 _"Boom! Yeah, I smoked you! You boys see that out there?!"_

Inside the cargo bay, Talon was nursing the bruise on his forehead from slamming into the hull of the tank. "What the hell…" he groaned as a medic crawled over and fussed over his ravaged arm.

"Wheels," Ace called, "I told you already you don't get points for making us puke!"

 **Palaven, Hierarchy Field Command Post**

"Impressive," Anderson commented, eyeing the video feed on the big display, along with a scrum of incredulous Hierarchy technicians.

"Joker did that with the Normandy once," Shepard added.

 **Palaven, Cipritine**

The immobile Reaper observed patiently as its coils approached full operational status, calibrating and updating the firing solution based on information from the Vex wards. Finally, it was ready.

The lasing cavity glowed and ejected a narrow pulse of photons into the sky.

It was a surprise to everyone when the Blackwatch transport jolted as its left thruster exploded. The near-infrared laser heated the outer casing enough to explosively sublimate, damaging the delicate control systems and resulting in the loss of engine power.

"Whoa!" Wheels punched the emergency fuel bypass switch and expertly compensated for the destruction. "All passengers, if you'll look outside you'll see that the left wing is on fire!"

Talon looked up as his vision cleared. "Wait, was that Wheels?"

"Yes, that's him," Garrus answered, "yes, he's flying a plane. And yes, we all remember what happened last time you flew with him."

 _"What the hell was that?!"_ Raptor Lead demanded.

The Reaper adjusted its aim, disappointed at having poorly calibrated its systems as it lined up a second shot.

Another bolt of red converted the right horizontal stabilizer into semi-melted shrapnel, forcing the craft to drop speed as Wheels struggled to maintain control.

 _"Lead, it's coming from down below!"_

 **Palaven, Hierarchy Field Command Post**

"Repeat that?" Orinia demanded.

"Ma'am, Colonel Vakarian's transport is taking fire from the ground!"

"From the ground?!" Victus cried. "What's on the ground in that area?"

"Sir, that's where the bunkers were, and-"

"That's where the Reaper landing forces were," the Primarch breathed in realization.

"The bombardment didn't destroy them all!" Admiral Cyrin exclaimed.

 **Palaven, Cipritine**

Two near misses was inexcusable, or it would have been if the Reaper had been fully functional. Under the circumstances, the machine decided to excuse itself for those mistakes as it lined up what it was determined to be the final shot.

"Raptor Lead, this is Archangel! Find out the source of the ground fire and give me the coordinates!" Garrus ordered.

The captain jerked in her seat and then directed her fighter down below. She was followed by her element members and a swarm of Vex that had intercepted the order and were determined to prevent whatever the outcome might be.

 _Where is it?! Show yourself!_ She desperately raked her eyes over the sensors and HUD, jinking around to avoid the plasma fire from behind while her computer scanned the ground. Finally, she saw a localized hotspot. _"I got it!"_ She called just as another bolt of red shot up.

This one struck right below the cockpit, blowing out the hull plate directly around a vulnerable control assembly. It also caused the cargo bay pressure to vent while the hydraulic control system promptly depressurized. With nothing to control the engine's core, the aircraft tore itself apart as large sections were pulled in different directions due to internal force and forward air resistance.

 **Palaven, Hierarchy Field Command Post**

"Lost radar contact," an operator announced. "Comm signal terminated at the source."

"Damn," Victus slammed his fist on the table.

"Raptor Lead, new orders," Admiral Cyrin announced in a weary voice. "Mark the source of the ground fire for-"

"What the hell is that?!" Anderson pointed at the video feed, which was still displaying the break-up cloud of debris.

There was a large object amidst the rain of metal and vapor falling much slower than the rest, and clearly too large to be shrapnel from the transport. The feed zoomed in as the Raptor pilot observing it closed in.

"Is that a tank?" Bailey asked.

"An armored hovercraft," Padok Wiks confirmed, "developed for Blackwatch as an orbital insertion heavy assault vehicle."

"I don't believe this," Orinia muttered, staring in awe at the scene.

"Sir, we have Colonel Vakarian's signal from a new contact!" the operator informed Victus.

 **Palaven, Cipritine**

Ace pushed Wheels off his legs and slowly sat up in the cramped space. "Ow…"

"What's going on?" Talon asked. "Tell me we're not still on that plane."

"We ain't on that plane," Wheels chuckled.

"Medics, check your armor!" Garrus ordered. "We're going with Plan B!"

The Vex and the Reaper did the equivalent of a double-take. There should have been no survivors from that blast! Some of the Vex chasing the Raptor pilots turned around and focused on the falling object. And spectral analysis revealed something quite troublesome. Unlike the transport aircraft, which like most airborne vehicles was relatively fragile, this new target was heavily armored. The Vex would not be able to damage the armor of the unit, even in a suicide attack, unless they were spectacularly lucky. And the tank's armor would require multiple shots from the Reaper's cannon, one of the downsides of relying on a directed energy weapon.

"What are the chances they think we're dead?" Ace wondered.

The screech of a laser pulse rattled the tank as it missed by several meters. Wheels reached over to the driver controls and tweaked the repulsors, spinning the tank into a new fall trajectory.

"Not good," Garrus growled.

"Hey doc?" Ace turned to address the most senior of the four medics. "If we're under ten thousand meters, we can still breathe, right?"

"What are you talking about, ten thousand meters?!" Talon yelped as the medic nodded uncertainly.

"Hey Talon, it's a little stuffy! I'm gonna pop the window!"

"What the hell?!"

The Vex had determined that there was a weakness to be exploited. When the tank repositioned itself in mid-fall, it had exposed the repulsors to analysis. They were not quite as well armored as the rest of the tank. And if taken out, they would cause the tank to impact the ground at a lethal velocity.

 _"They're going for the tank!"_ Raptor lead called.

One of the hatches opened up, and Ace stuck his torso out, popping up the heavy machine cannon and unloading a hail of heavy particle fire at the oncoming Vex. "Yeah-hoo! Just try and stop us you Geth bastards!"

"Let me have a turn, Ace! Come on!" Wheels shouted.

"Why are we in a falling tank?!" Talon screamed.

"Because the plane exploded!"

"Wha-what! When?!"

"Recently!" Wheels replied uselessly. "The Reaper shot it down!"

"What Reaper?!"

The eccentric pilot tapped the repulsors again and pirouetted the tank out of the path of another red pulse, much to the consternation of the Reaper below.

"The same one that's still trying to kill us!"

Talon pointed his good arm at Garrus. "I blame you, colonel!"

"You know, technically we're not flying," Garrus pointed out calmly.

"I know! We're falling!"

In spite of the best efforts of the Raptor pilots, one Vex Harpy managed to position itself directly below the tank before rocketing up and smashing into the underside of the tank. Half a second later, its core disintegrated, taking out the repulsor system. The tank lurched, and deployed the emergency chute from the rear, causing it to fall nose first, and almost throwing Ace out of the gunner's port.

"Whoa-ly shit!"

The medics struggled to keep the other three wounded soldiers from slamming into the walls as the tank reoriented itself, dumping them out of their makeshift beds.

 _"The tank just took a hit!"_

"Colonel!" Ace scrambled back inside, thanking the spirits his rifle had caught on something and prevented his abrupt egress. "We're in trouble!"

"Raptor Lead, this is Archangel! Do you have those coordinates for me?!"

The captain swore, and took valuable time to relocate the source of the laser fire. _"Yes sir!"_

"Ace, get onto the main gun! We got a target location!"

"What the hell am I trying to hit?!" the XO demanded.

"Trust me!" Garrus replied. "Rotate the turret eighty degrees left!"

"Fire in the hole!" Wheels sang.

The turret swiveled in the ordered direction.

"Depress fifteen degrees and fire!"

The tank lurched in the opposite direction, sliding across the sky as it streaked downward towards the ground. Another pulse of red flew by, and the remnants of the Vex chased the vehicle with the Raptors desperately running interference. Garrus ordered another aim correction, and the tank repeated the process.

 **Palaven, Hierarchy Field Command Post**

Alliance and Hierarchy senior officers observed in disbelief. "Are they trying to shoot at the Vex?" Colonel Vacinus wondered.

"No," Victus remarked. "They're trying to fly that tank."

Orinia turned to eyeball her husband. "'Fly the tank,'" she repeated.

"It's Vakarian," the Primarch replied. "I simply asked myself 'what is the most ridiculous possible course of action from their position?' and rolled with it. Besides, he's aiming to hit something."

"And what would that be?" Cyrin asked.

"The Reaper," Shepard breathed. "That's why he asked for the coordinates."

"That lunatic is going to drop fifty tons of heavy armor and ordnance on a Reaper's face." Anderson grinned. "I like his style."

"That's because it's yours," Victus said dryly.

 **Palaven, Cipritine**

The Reaper felt a sense of urgency now, having heard the transmissions and observing the target's general flight path. It was definitely headed towards its position. Frustratingly, the enemy seemed to know just when to reposition to throw off its aim.

The Vex air units were nearly spent. In their haste to eliminate Spectre Garrus Vakarian and his entourage from play, they had been slowly ground down by the desperate turian fighter defenders. Now, they would only be useful as eyes in the sky to help aim.

The Reaper had only one remaining option. No doubt the Hierarchy would send bombers, mount an artillery strike, or even another orbital bombardment on itself. But if it could land one good sustained shot on the tank, it could boil the passengers alive. There would be no stopping the tank from impacting, but a key individual in the Hierarchy's war effort would be eliminated.

The tank finished spinning from its latest shot, and swiveled to face the opposite direction. One final shot firmly arrested its lateral momentum. Against all odds, Garrus had managed to place the tank directly above the origin of the laser fire.

"Alright, everyone get ready!" Garrus roared. "Wheels, set the drive to overload! Ace, lock the turret full front for auto fire! Medics, strap everyone in and get ready to bail!" Then he turned to awkwardly strap a panicking flailing Talon to his chest rig before sliding toward the open hatch.

"I'm too young to die!" the wounded Blackwatch trooper shrieked.

"Cores's rigged!" Wheels announced with deranged glee.

"Strap in!" Ace ordered, throwing restraints from his armor around the pilot.

"Everybody good?" Garrus asked.

"Yes sir!" the senior medic replied from behind his unconscious patient.

"Then let's get out of here!"

"The greatest ride is the last ride, colonel!" Wheels yelled as he and Ace dropped free of the tank before disappearing beyond the hatch.

The Reaper fired one last time, sustaining the beam and engulfing the tank. But semi-molten tank shells began smashing themselves into its front glacis, sending shockwaves through its frame. As the tank fell the final three hundred meters at terminal velocity, the Reaper managed to scan the vehicle, only to learn that the turian soldiers had bailed out. Belatedly, the Vex reported visual sightings of the individuals bailing and descending using mass effect thrusters on their armor.

Two final shells smashed the laser emitter to pieces, and then the tank followed through, embedding itself deep within the Reaper shell before coming to a halt, right next to the Reaper's own drive core. The subsequent detonation sent a pillar of blue into the sky like a signal flare.

 **Palaven, Hierarchy Field Command Post**

"Ma'am," the operator turned to address the general, "Raptor Lead reports visual sighting of Blackwatch personnel."

"Have them follow and run cover as long as they can," Orinia ordered. "We'll send out a recovery team to pick them up."

"You know, I heard stories about some of the crazy shit Vakarian pulled before he became a Spectre," Victus noted. "Never quite believed them until now."

"This one'll be a pretty good one," Anderson chuckled, shaking his head.

"You want us to head out to help rescue him?" Shepard asked.

"Probably not a good idea," Vacinus replied. "Vakarian has been a bit…twitchy, the last two years when it comes to the Alliance. He might shoot at you the second he sees you unless we're around to tell him off."

"Better get comfortable," Victus added. "It'll be a six hour round trip for the recovery team to bring him back here."

 _Contact Report: Vex Harpy_

 _A derivative of the Geth Baller, the Harpy trades durability, maneuverability and low target profile for speed, airborne capability and multi-role combat._

 _According to post-action reports from the Turian Hierarchy, the Vex utilize the units in swarms to hunt down isolated enemies, or to suicide bomb prepared positions. Recovered wreckage has shown the Harpy to be a remarkably simplistic construction, one intended for mass production as a disposable combat unit. Quarian consultants have determined that only a mere forty Vex runtimes are required to operate this combat platform._

 _When performing a suicide run, the unit has been observed to overload its Element Zero core generator, timing the process to conclude a little after detonation for max effect. The unit appears to have been designed with this purpose in mind, due to the lack of contiguous armor that would more likely remain intact during the explosion, inhibiting fragmentation._

 _Codex: Aegis Hovertank_

 _Drawing inspiration from the Alliance's HADES armor, the Salarian Union and the Turian Hierarchy collaborated to produce a heavy armor vehicle that can be dropped from orbit to supplement the newly created Jumptrooper regiments. Its intended role is to safely convey heavy assault infantry and their supplies safely to the ground through determined anti-air defenses. Once on the ground, it serves as a source of armored fire support and allows for rapid advance and seizure of hostile territory against determined opposition._

 _The armor composite is a derivative of the Alliance Carapace Armor, of which pieces were recovered from Shanxi and the Alliance Embassy battle. Armaments consist of particle beam and conventional Mass Driver weapons. Mobility is provided by large "pads" that generate mass effect fields sufficient to slow its fall from orbit, and move the unit at speeds of over seventy kilometers per hour across open terrain.  
_

 _One noted disadvantage of its mass effect propulsion is that while moving, its range and accuracy is significantly reduced, and its ramming capability is vastly inferior to tracked vehicles. For example, it encounters difficulties pushing through makeshift barricades such as destroyed cars. However, it was not designed for the confined spaces of urban combat. It was primarily intended to be fielded against the likes of the Alliance._

 **Lieutenant Colonel Garrus Vakarian: crazy awesome, or just crazy?**

 **A glimpse of the Vex and some new Citadel tech. There's more where that came from.**

 **The Vex Harpies are inspired by the Ancient Drone weapons from Stargate, except nowhere near as durable or powerful. But they can shoot.**

* * *

 **One thing that has bugged me about sci-fi space combat is the number of times you see battle scenes between ships in the middle of nowhere in space. No space stations around, no moons, no planets, nothing but empty void all around.**

 **The sheer improbability and lack of reason for this bothers me a lot. The closest analogue to this kind of situation is the US Navy's Pacific Campaign during World War II. Without things like satellites or the SOSUS network operated by NATO, the chances of locating a naval force on the open ocean are minuscule. Even taking into account such things as intelligence intercepts, convoys change course all the time to render their path less predictable while in transit to their targets. That's why the Imperial Japanese Navy waited around island bases for the USN to approach before attacking.**

 **Had they independently struck out into the ocean, they would have left their territory virtually undefended, for a very slim chance of preemptively meeting the enemy away from their territory. Not to mention, when your ship goes down on the open sea, you have virtually no chance of rescue.**

 **You win war not by mounting "force-on-force" battles, but by destroying your enemy's ability and will to fight. Logistics is key. And this is just in two dimensions of space, on a planet, for surface combatants.**

 **In space? You have three dimensions of movement. You have exponentially greater distances and areas to cover, and correspondingly lower chances of random encounters. With the exception of ships breaking down mid-travel, sending a distress signal, and getting pounced on by pirates and opportunists, battles in the middle of nowhere have zero justification to happen.**

 **For this reason, the Alliance is not sending out hunting parties throughout their territory. Neither is the Hierarchy. There's no point. Protecting their logistics is the most important part of the campaign against the Reapers, right in front of locating the enemy's logistics.**

 **Ops and Plans officers have a saying: "Amateurs talk Tactics. Veterans study Strategy. Professionals look at Logistics."**


	56. Sins of our Fathers

**It's been a minute since the last update, hasn't it? No thanks to life in the desert. Fucking 128 degree weather with 34% humidity during the day. Goes down to 95 degrees with 60 something percent humidity at night.  
**

 **But I got promoted. Yay.**

 **Read and Review!**

Chapter Fifty-four

 **Omega, Docks**

Orianna waited patiently as the transport settled onto its landing pad and its passengers strolled down the ramp.

"Well look at you," she commented. "It's not every day a general officer shows up in full body armor."

"Yes well, the novelty wears off quickly," General Oleg Petrovsky noted. "Are we secure from prying eyes?"

Orianna pouted. "What kind of agent do you take me for? Would I have given the all-clear signal to your pilots if I wasn't sure I'd taken care of the area?"

"You'll forgive me for being cautious," the general replied dryly, "considering that all your experience up to this point has been with humans, not aliens."

"Not quite true, general. I was granted the liberty to go around Shanxi and experiment a bit with some of those Red Sand addicts. God, was that ever a mistake."

"Anything interesting?"

Orianna shuddered, her face twisting in disgust. "I'll just say this: everyone has all kinds of sexual perversions, and the druggies are the worst."

"Hmph, I'll take your word for it." Petrovsky swept his eyes over the docks, noting the lethargic air of the suborned workers, before motioning to his retinue of troops.

"I can't wait to start exterminating the filth on this station," the psionic woman whispered viciously.

"Unfortunately, you won't have that opportunity."

Orianna snapped her head around in a glare. "What?! I was ordered to do that!"

"There's been a change of plans," Petrovsky held out a datapad. "New orders for you."

The black haired woman scanned it and scowled. "So you're taking over?"

"I'm taking command," the general corrected. "Another person will be taking _over._ "

Orianna raised an eyebrow inquisitively. "I haven't heard anything about another agent like me."

"This isn't an agent. This is more of a test drive."

Meanwhile, Petrovsky's men carefully extracted a large canister from the cargo hold. Technical officers fussed over the object while soldiers set about preparing the transportation equipment, all while they attempted to ignore the faint psionic whispering from the pod.

 _War…I…bring…War…_

 **Palaven, Cipritine**

"Welcome back, sir!" a two-star general saluted as Garrus and his team disembarked from the transport.

"I'm never going to get used to that," Garrus muttered as he returned the salute while walking toward the entrance, pausing only to let the medical staff fly past with their injured patients.

"It's what you get for being a Spectre," Ace reminded him.

"You were given the authority as a Spectre to order around anyone who wasn't a Council member, Primarch, Dalatrass, or Matriarch representative," Victus chimed in as he greeted the two officers inside headquarters. "The least you could have was the command respect that comes with it."

"I hate ceremony and protocol," Garrus grumbled. "It's why I took that assignment to begin with."

"You didn't _have_ to come back to Blackwatch, you know."

"We all make mistakes."

Ace eyeballed a few of the security troops as they moved along. "What's going on? The cops don't look too happy."

"You mean other than an invasion of giant mechanical cephalopods?" Victus asked rhetorically. "The Alliance is here."

Garrus's nostrils flared.

"I invited them. They graciously offered assistance, and I accepted, hence a few of their people are in the base right now." Victus leveled a stare at the Blackwatch commander. "Whatever your issues, I trust you can set them aside and be professional, right?"

The former Spectre sighed. "I won't like it, but you're the Primarch. Congratulations, by the way."

"I could have done without that," Victus mumbled as they entered a side conference room.

"Knew those Vex couldn't kill you!" Anderson boomed, stepping forward with a hand extended.

"Didn't expect to see you here," Garrus greeted neutrally.

"You all know Lieutenant Colonel Vakarian," Victus nodded before gesturing to Ace, "and this is Major Kevis Longinus, or as he prefers to be called, 'Ace.'"

"Pleasure to meet you guys," Ace inclined his head respectfully to the Alliance officers, noting that he was the lowest ranking person in the room. "You don't mind me asking, sir, but what happened to Primarch Fedorian?"

The senior Hierarchy leadership in the room stiffened.

"You saw the craters on the way in?" Victus asked quietly.

"I was wondering about those," Bailey confessed, "Reaper attack?"

"A response to the Reaper attack," the Primarch corrected him. "When they came here, they went straight for the evacuation shelters. They were packed with civilians. The Vex and the Reapers were trying to crack them open to get at our people."

Garrus's eyes widened in horror. "He didn't-"

"-give the order, no. I did, once I realized what the Reapers were trying to do." Victus closed his eyes for a moment. "I recommended we fire from orbit on the bunkers. Fedorian was the one to authorize it. Then he resigned and made me Primarch."

"But why-?" Ace whispered.

"Indoctrination," Shepard chimed in. "They wanted to compromise the civilians and mobilize them against your people. It would have been devastating for morale if your men had to fight and kill their friends and family."

Victus looked toward the window, where a pillar of smoke was drifting into view. "And every time I look out a window, I ask myself whether it was the right choice."

"The way I see it, it was your only choice,"Anderson assured him.

"That doesn't make me feel any better," the Primarch growled. "Maybe if we'd had more people, we could have done a better job defending Palaven."

"You did drive them off though," Bailey pointed out.

"Only because they saw we were willing to shell our own people."

"So what are we doing now?" Garrus demanded, tamping down on his horror.

"Cleanup operations are still underway," Colonel Vacinus explained. "The Vex are making that a nightmare though. They're inserting themselves planetside at terminal velocities, faster than our fleet or our ground defenses can intercept them."

"So localize their landing sights, run an evacuation, and then hit them with EMP!"

"That would take out much of our infrastructure," Orinia objected. "Comms would go dead, unshielded electronics would fry themselves, and any survivors would be completely cut off from rescue."

"What about another round of orbital fire?"

Victus gave him a baleful glare. "The idea is to defend our territory, not destroy it."

"Survivors in their territory shouldn't be a priority," Garrus argued. "Anyone we recover has to be screened for possible indoctrination, and that takes too much time. Meanwhile, those areas are rally points for the enemy. I say blow the shit out of areas that have no value to us and consolidate a cordon around them to keep the Vex locked out."

"You're talking about creating free-fire zones," Anderson mused.

"Yeah."

"Bars from the stars create a lot of collateral disruption and damage," Admiral Cyrin fired back. "Not to mention that using them again would break what confidence our people have in the military's ability to protect them. And the enemy would just counter that by using their mobility to target critical infrastructure like our undamaged factories and living spaces. We can't be everywhere on the ground, Vakarian."

"So we need more men. That's the issue?" Ace queried.

Victus sighed. "Yes. Unfortunately, that's what it comes down to. We do not have the available bodies for the job here. But I can't just pull from the rest of the fleet without jeopardizing our positions out there. We need more men, we have more men, but moving them will just make things worse."

"You can never have enough boots on the ground," Bailey summarized. "Ain't that the truth."

Silence settled over the room for a moment.

"Actually," Garrus spoke up hesitantly, "I know one place that we can get more men from."

Everyone turned to regard him suspiciously.

"Where is that, exactly?" Victus asked warily.

"The Krogan DMZ."

More silence, coupled with a great deal of hesitation.

"A fine idea except for that bit where the interdiction force is what is keeping the Krogan in line," Orinia pointed out dryly.

"Sir," Garrus addressed the Primarch, "we know Urdnot Wrex. He helped us when we were chasing down Saren."

"Yeah, and he offered the Alliance a deal. He said if we helped his people with the Genophage, he'd keep his people in line," Shepard recalled.

"Did he happen to clarify what keeping his people in line would entail?"

"He wants his people to focus less on fighting and more on building."

"That doesn't sound like any krogan I've ever heard of," Vacinus remarked.

"It fits with his profile," Padok Wiks spoke up for the first time. "The STG has kept an eye on Urdnot Wrex as a potential unifier of the krogan race. He holds surprisingly moderate views. For the longest time, it was unknown how much influence he would have. Lately, he's been successful at ending much of the internecine war between the clans, and many krogan are starting to return to Tuchanka. It's been making our leadership nervous," he admitted.

"Hmm," Victus pondered. "And does the Alliance have anything to do with that success?"

"Possibly," Anderson noted. "That's not my purview."

"If it's true, the Alliance would probably be able to back Wrex up and keep the other krogan from trying anything," Garrus finished. "Meanwhile, we could bring the DMZ force back to help on Palaven."

"Except for one other thing," the Primarch cut him off. "Any movement of that force has to be unilaterally approved by us, the Asari, and the Salarians."

"I don't think the Asari will be that much of a problem," Shepard thought out loud.

"I agree. The main issue is getting Dalatrass Linron's approval, and that is about as likely as you guys welcoming the Reapers to your territory with open arms. She's…shall we say, very prejudiced against the Krogan. Anything that keeps them down is a positive in her book. She'll fight tooth and nail against loosening any restrictions over Tuchanka."

"Especially since the alternative is to rely on the Alliance to cover for that," Wiks added. "She is arguably even more antipathic towards the Alliance. Leaving you in charge of the DMZ would be seen as adding to your power."

"Sounds like you disagree with her," Anderson commented.

"I think that in our collective situation, we'll have to accept compromises we don't like. Unfortunately, the Dalatrass is not quite as practical."

"So maybe we should have a chat with all of us involved."

"Call the Council?" Bailey wondered.

Victus shook his head. "That only works for members of the Council and powers with direct relations to it. No, we'll have to call a meeting with the Krogan as well, and they're not going to trust us in a meet-up on the Citadel. Besides, I'd like to meet this Wrex myself."

"A summit on neutral territory?" Anderson thought for a moment. "How about on one of our ships? We have good relations with the Krogan, and the Council has allowed us into your territories."

Victus shrugged. "I'd be okay with that. The Dalatrass might take issue with it."

"There's no 'might' about it," Wiks warned. "No doubt the Dalatrass is still furious over being railroaded on the Citadel when Councilor Irissa flipped her support and allowed the Alliance to come here."

"Well in that case, tough shit," the Primarch announced. "This is a crisis that concerns all of us, and whatever our differences, we need to move past them and learn to work together."

"I'll have our people contact Wrex and set up a meet," Anderson offered. "We'll send you coordinates, and we'll keep our escorts at a distance."

"I'm heading to Sur'Kesh to let my leadership know," Wiks said, pulling away from the wall he'd been leaning against. "Let me know of any chances, and I'll pass them on."

The door closed behind the departing agent, with Victus's eyes lingering on his armored figure. Then he turned and regarded everyone else in the room. Apart from the two Blackwatch officers, they were only wearing dress uniforms.

"He's wearing body armor in the HQ building, as a non-combat representative," he noted, "and that should tell you everything you need to know about the STG."

A few chuckles abounded. "We better head back to the fleet," Anderson said. "Hopefully, we can all resolve this. It was a pleasure meeting you, again,"

The Primarch shook his hand. "Likewise."

Garrus cleared his throat. "Sir, you have orders for us?" he indicated himself and Ace.

"Actually, yes. With your permission, Anderson, I'd like to have Garrus tag along with your people, since you have a history of cooperating. I'm reinstating his Spectre status and taking him out of Blackwatch. That leaves you in command of the unit, Ace."

Ace blinked. "Sir?"

"From what I've read of your performance reports, you've done a damn fine job keeping the unit running while Garrus was gallivanting around the galaxy. They need a familiar face in charge, and I can't spare another senior officer to have them learn the ropes for Blackwatch."

"Uh, thank you, sir. It's an honor."

Garrus smirked. "You know Ace, I liked it better when you weren't as respectful."

Ace blinked again, and then slowly turned to Garrus with a smirk, before raising a very rude gesture to the salue position. "Go fuck yourself, sir."

"That's better," Garrus laughed as he returned the gesture, much to General Orinia's disapproval.

 **Tuchanka, Urdnot Encampment**

"Mind your manners, whelp," Urdnot Wreave growled as he pulled away from the visitor to take his usual place against one of the walls.

The younger krogan growled before brushing off the remark as he walked to stand at the center of the chamber.

"Clan Urdnot, I came to ask-"

"We know why you are here, whelp," an ancient battlemaster rumbled off to the side. "You want approval to meet with the female clans under our protection. Spare us the pleading."

The visitor glared. "We have much to offer. Warriors, weapons, and wealth. Urdnot has much to gain by allying with us."

"Or rather, you have much to gain by allying with Urdnot," Okeer sneered from his place near the central throne while Wrex idly tapped on his omnitool, indifferent to the proceedings. "Your offerings are pittances compared to what we already have. Over half the clans have gathered with us, and pooled their resources. Your clan is young, aggressive, and foolish."

The young krogan snarled. "We are strong in spite of the Genophage! We even acquired some of Saren's research!"

"So have we," yet another krogan, this one female, rebutted.

Wrex rolled his eyes before returning his attention to the message on his omnitool. Okeer nodded as if in agreement.

The warrior roared and pulled his shotgun before firing at the throne. The shot pattern splattered against Wrex's biotic barrier, drawing reactions from the other Urdnot krogan in the chamber, and momentarily wiping the slight smile off his face.

"Is that a challenge, whelp?" Wreave growled, approaching the center with a Revenant machine gun in one hand.

Unafraid and undeterred, the visitor snorted before looking back at the throne. "I only ask that you take this matter seriously, Urdnot."

Wrex lifted his cheek from his right hand, and stood up from the throne. "The only matter I do not take seriously, boy," he began in a booming voice, "is you."

The younger krogan's confidence began to wilt as the legendary battlemaster and mercenary began descending the steps from his throne, his biotics shining a deadly blue.

"Your clan politics _bore_ me," Wrex continued deliberately. "Your demeanor is that of a petulant whelp. And in the process of drawing my attention, you've alienated one of my favored allies, the Gel'Moran."

The krogan swallowed nervously while Wreave stepped back, satisfied at seeing the arrogance of this youngster crumble before his older brother.

"You will have an agreement, son of Kr'ee, if you make amends with them, and you put your pathetic grudges aside," Wrex stopped a few feet in front of the young krogan. "But return to me like this again," he gestured at the shotgun still clutched hin the krogan's hands, "and I will bathe the ruins in your blood. _Personally._ "

The krogan looked around, seeing an array of other krogan legends against the walls, eyeing him with disdain. Then he looked back into the eyes of Urdnot Wrex and reminded himself that as deadly as the other battlemasters were, the head of Clan Urdnot was on another level entirely.

"That's your cue to leave, runt," Wreave called. The visitor complied, turning and almost running from the chamber.

"Finally," Wrex grumbled, turning back to the throne, "idiot. Okeer, you and I have some business offworld."

"Alliance business?" the scientist asked. He had been immensely grateful for the back-channel support and the resources he'd been provided.

"Bigger than that," Wrex waved off. "Wreave, that leaves you in charge until I get back. Have fun with the Blood Pack."

 **Unknown Location**

She ran through the information that she'd painstakingly collated during the past two years. The shock of her potential discovery had long since faded, to be replaced by a sense of anger and betrayal. There was no direct proof, but nothing that contradicted her worst fears either.

She was furious. At him, for abandoning her. At her superiors, for not seeing it, or perhaps hiding it. And at herself, for not realizing sooner.

The human criminal element of the Terminus Systems had become remarkably quiet, further frustrating her efforts to dig into the mystery confounding her at the moment. She'd already exhausted Bekenstein, Illium and the Citadel as sources of information. And she wasn't about to show her face on Omega, where likely any freelancer with connections to the enemy would be on the lookout.

The best source of information she could use to continue working would be Matriarch Aethyta's Shadow Broker network. However, the man she was pursuing was no fool. After the incident with Thane Krios, he could easily have traced everything back to the asari, and through possible contacts remaining in his stead, even further back to herself.

And once he did that, he would endeavor to keep an eye on the Matriarch. All the better to limit her own options.

But there was another way, she thought. Another avenue available. Dr. T'Soni had the same access. Reports were that she had been sighted on the Citadel, in the company of Alliance personnel.

Those same reports said the Alliance was on its way to lend a helping hand to the Turian Hierarchy.

If things ended there, so would her hope of discreet access to the Shadow Broker network. But it wouldn't. There was always the diplomatic give and take. They would head elsewhere.

But where exactly? Thessia? Unlikely. Sur'kesh? Only if the Salarians were willing to deal, and considering the Dalatrass, the idea was laughable. The Migrant Fleet? A waste of time. The Quarians were for all intents and purposes in the pocket of the Alliance through back-channel aid. Minor races like the Elcor or Volus? No.

Tuchanka? Hmm, there was something to consider. She'd had fleeting contacts on Tuchanka while setting up collaborative efforts to work on a cure for the Genophage. That could be her in. But it could also be watched.

She sniffed, remembering her own psionic abilities, and in particular her proclivity for illusions and concealment. Humans stood out on the planet, so the enemy would rely on paid informants. She would simply have to avoid the scope of the bio-sensors placed around and on the planet by the CDEM, the Council force detailed to the DMZ.

Certain schools of thought within the Alliance projected that the Hierarchy would attempt to court the Krogan in the event of war, or pull their contribution to the DMZ away. Whatever the outcome, Tuchanka would appear to be her best choice of destination.

 **The Orizaba, Bridge Conference room**

"No matter how many times I look at these things, it never ceases to amaze me that you have the capacity to build ships this big in such large numbers," Victus mused as he entered the room.

"The wonders of our Elerium-based technology," Admiral Sergey Mikhailovich replied neutrally.

"Yes, a secret you have yet to share with anyone else in an effort to maintain your superiority at our expense," Dalatrass Linron commented sourly.

"Hmph," the four-star officer snorted, declining to get into an argument.

"Instead of griping about that, maybe you should be thankful," Wrex grinned as he shouldered his way through the door, followed by Okeer. "If you had their tech, you'd be the number one target for the Reapers. I don't see you putting up anywhere near as good a fight as the Turians."

"A rich comment coming from you, krogan," Linron snapped.

Wrex laughed. "I just tell it like it is. Does the truth hurt, salarian?"

"Would it kill you to hold off on the antagonistic banter until we get everyone in here?" Captain Pressly asked, annoyed, as he followed Captain Shepard into the conference room.

"I second that," Garrus added.

Liara slipped in at the end and took a spot in a corner of the room, feeling distinctly out of place.

Garrus looked around. "Where's Bailey?"

"He's busy," Anderson answered as he sidled in and closed the door. "Now we're kind of pressed for time, so let's get started. Comms?"

 _"Sir, we have a connection. Standing by."_

"Open the channel."

A screen at the rear of the room illuminated while the lights dimmed. Shortly afterward, it displayed a familiar face.

"Hello Ambassador," Mikhailovich greeted.

 _"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,"_ Udina bowed at the other end. _"Unfortunately, I was unable to convince Councilor Irissa to make time for this conference call."_

"I think we can make do without her," Victus replied.

"Oh is that how we do things now?" Linron sneered. "We disregard one of our senior members when it is convenient?"

"Spare me your outrage," Victus sighed. "You know very well that what we're here to talk about has very little to do with the Asari."

"You want to pull your forces from the DMZ. My vote is negative."

"Pulling the force completely would give you additional troops to shore up your own defenses you know."

"Absolutely not. You expect us to trust the Krogan to behave themselves without oversight?"

"'The Krogan' has a name: Urdnot Wrex," Wrex growled. "And as far as behaving ourselves, what do you think I've been trying to get my people to do for the last six years?"

"No thanks to you two, we might add," Okeer interjected, receiving a warning look from Wrex.

Victus took a deep breath. "Dalatrass, I don't know if you've noticed, but I have a war going on in my territory. My home planet has been devastated, and I need those men who are uselessly camped out on the DMZ back home."

"I hardly consider them useless when they are keeping the Krogan in line."

"What are we? Wall decorations?" Wrex grumbled at being ignored.

Mikhailovich cleared his throat. "Perhaps I might offer a solution," he began, drawing the attention of the others, "of having my fleet take the place of your forces in the DMZ?"

Linron scoffed. "I believe your people would call it 'giving the fox the keys to the hen house?' Leaving you free reign to induct the Krogan into your Alliance and further strengthen your forces at our expense would be an even worse option than what my colleague is suggesting."

The admiral spread his arms. "Well then, feel free to abide by the alternative. Leave your forces in place with no ability to retreat and reconsolidate. They'll be destroyed where they are by the Reapers, or worse, co-opted."

Victus was gratified to see that the Dalatrass had no answer to that.

"You know, the Reapers aren't even targeting my planet," Wrex added. "If anything, they'll be saving my planet for last, since we don't have any naval force like you people."

"You want to keep it that way?" Anderson queried.

"No, I'd really prefer if it were otherwise. But that has to come after I get my people to rebuild, and that won't happen if the Reapers have their way."

"Do you have a point, krogan?" Linron demanded testily.

"It's 'Wrex,' and yes, I do. Unlike most of the hot-headed idiots on my planet, I think about our future. There is no future in trying for another Krogan Rebellion, or in just hiding out and avoiding the war with the Reapers. What we need to do is fight back. But my people are vulnerable. If I can't guarantee that we have a future, then I won't have any control over them. They'll go fight for or against whoever they want to."

"But what do you need, Wrex?" Victus asked.

Wrex put his knuckles on the table and leaned forward. "I need a cure for the Genophage."

"Absolutely not!" Linron exploded. "The Genophage is non-negotiable!"

 _"Dalatrass,"_ Udina began, _"while I understand the general view that the galaxy holds of the Krogan race, and the resulting aversion to the idea of releasing them from the Genophage, it seems to me that you have taken that view to an extreme level. Clan Leader Urdnot Wrex has just explicitly stated that he has no interest in getting his people involved in another rebellion, and expressed a desire to aid all of our races in the fight against the Reapers. What is the reasoning behind your refusal to even entertain the idea of a cure?"_

"The Krogan Rebellion, what else?" Linron answered dismissively. "My people uplifted the Krogan, and look where that got us. I have no intention of allowing old mistakes to be repeated!"

"Hmph, 'uplifted,'" Okeer snorted, "more like you saw us as living weapons to use against the Rachni."

"Well while we're on that subject, what about how the Alliance handled the Rachni Queen that Saren had his hands on?"

 _"The Alliance does not condone extermination of a sapient race,"_ Udina replied sternly.

"You have not had any experience with them! They are dangerous and vicious animals!"

"And so are we," Anderson countered. "All the races here in this room are 'dangerous and vicious animals.' We all have our own military forces. We are all the dominant races on our homeworlds. We all have a history of invasion and extermination in our histories. The Rachni are no different."

"Getting back to where we were," Victus interrupted, "and I hate repetition, but Wrex has said that keeping the rest of the krogan under control is his goal. Normally, I wouldn't take his words at face value, but this is a crisis. I'm willing to compromise a bit."

Now it was the Dalatrass' turn to snort. "How would curing the Genophage benefit my people? We don't have the advantage of your fleets or racial constitutions. We can't face straight combat the way your people can. If the krogan decided to repeat dropping asteroids on my worlds, what ability do we have to stop it?"

"Were you even listening?!" Captain Shepard exploded. "Wrex wants to keep his people from doing anything like that ever again! How many times do we have to repeat that to you? Or do you just have a hate-on for the krogan race, or anyone who isn't a salarian?"

 _"I do confess that from my perspective, you are simply indulging in rampant xenophobia,"_ Udina mused. _"Paranoia and xenophobia may contribute to the safety of your people in the short term, but they are quite counterproductive in a situation like this which requires cooperation from everyone."_

"I would have thought that your people would be proceeding with fabricating a cure regardless of my people's wishes," Linron fired back acidly. "Or is such a thing too advanced for your scientists?"

 _"Quite the opposite, actually,"_ A new voice interrupted. A second screen illuminated on a side wall and revealed the face of Dr. Vahlen.

"Hello doctor," Mikhailovich greeted. "I did not know you would be participating."

 _"When I learned of this meeting, I deemed it necessary to be made part of it."_

"You just said that the cure is not too advanced for you. Please elaborate."

 _"Yes, well, in our studies of the Genophage and its effects on krogan tissue, my staff have learned that the mechanism is actually very primitive and quite shoddy, by our standards."_ Okeer laughed uproariously while Linron made a strangled noise of outrage. _"To clarify, the Genophage is an RNA type of virus. RNA viruses mutate very rapidly, normally to a less virulent and effective strand over time. This is obviously a flaw for a bioweapon. But the Genophage actually uses this very primitive aspect to its advantage. A DNA based virus mutates much more slowly, but the krogan immune system could adapt to it far more readily. The RNA virus has been tweaked to mutate at about the same rate that the krogan immune system can adapt to it, if not faster."_

"So you're saying that the Genophage and the krogan physiology are locked in an arms race," Liara exclaimed, to the surprise of the other people in the room.

 _"That is exactly right, miss…"_

"Dr. Liara T'Soni," the asari offered.

 _"Dr. Moira Vahlen. If I may ask, what is your specialty?"_

Liara blushed, embarrassed. "I'm not that kind of doctor. I'm an archaeologist."

 _"Oh, I see."_

"Well I guess that would explain why the krogan haven't become immune to the Genophage," Victus commented, "but not what the cure is."

 _"I have merely explained how the Genophage maintains its virulency. It is aided by the chemical secretions of the krogan physiology, coupled with the predisposition to consume items that would normally be toxic or otherwise dangerous to living tissue. It is not too much a stretch to say that if a krogan infected with the Genophage lived a healthy life by the standards of other species, they would have a better chance of acquiring an immunity."_

"Well ain't that a kick in the quads," Wrex muttered.

 _"While it maintains that virulency, it targets tissue marked for reproductive purposes such as gonads and the endocrine system, and throws off the delicate balance required for successful reproduction. It is the one aspect of krogan biology that is not designed for multiple redundancies. The bodies of most individuals are unable to purge the infection, or rebalance themselves. Hence, pregnancies under the Genophage typically end in failure."_

"So primitive virus throws the body out of whack, and most of the krogan can't compensate," Anderson summarized.

 _"Correct, in essentials."_

"Then what about a cure?"

 _"Unfortunately, the best way to go about creating a cure is to acquire an unusually healthy and fertile krogan female whose immune system has fought off the Genophage and use their genetic material to synthesize it. I do not know of any such individuals available."_

"I do," Okeer grinned, "and so does the Dalatrass."

Linron blinked. "What nonsense are you speaking?"

"Don't play cute with me," the old krogan scientist rumbled. "One of our women disappeared a long time ago. It was right after she had a whelp. One of Urdnot's women, as a matter of fact."

"You mean Urdnot Bakara?" Wrex asked. Okeer nodded, and Wrex twisted his features into a terrifying death glare. "Is this true, salarian? Are you holding one of my oldest friends captive because she fought off your bioweapon?!"

"Wrex, calm down," Anderson cautioned as blue sparks began to fly off the clan leader's armor.

"Calm down?!" Wrex turned his glare on the rear admiral. "I owe her my life! She saved me when my own father turned on me! She could be the last hope of my people, and the salarians are holding her in some sort of prison cell?!"

"Wrex, we can work something out if you keep your temper," Shepard added. "But if you lose it, you're only giving the Dalatrass more reason to refuse. You've lived with the Genophage for almost fifteen hundred years. A few more days won't hurt."

Wrex held the glare, but let his biotics subside.

 _"Dalatrass Linron, I believe I speak for everyone involved when I say that I would like to know if that assertion is true,"_ Udina noted. _"Is this…Urdnot Bakara in the custody of the Salarian Union?"_

"We do have a krogan female in custody," Linron admitted grudgingly. "I do not know her name."

Victus groaned. "Linron, I'm going to sum everything up right now. I need men, and I want to pull them from the DMZ. Wrex needs something to offer his people to keep them from coming after us when we pull our forces out, and I'm sure the Alliance would rather actually have their fleet _fight_ the Reapers instead of baby-sitting the krogan. You want to know how curing the Genophage benefits the Union? How about having a bunch of strong and powerful allies willing to help you defend your planets? I'm sure Wrex might be willing to do that."

"Don't make promises you can't keep, whelp," Okeer snickered.

Victus scowled, but ignored the jab. "On the other hand, if you don't help now, no one is going to give you a quid pro quo. I don't see the Alliance being willing to waste their time helping one someone who only looks out for number one, and I won't do that either. And with the personal relationship that Wrex has to the krogan you're holding, this is do or die. If you refuse now, he'll have no reason not to tell every krogan in the galaxy to go after the Union in any way possible, and you'll have two enemies to fight: the Reapers and the krogan. Hell, once this bit of news makes its way to my people, I guarantee you that I'd be the last friendly turian you'll ever see. My people don't like that kind of treachery."

"Funny that you mention that," Linron fired back, "considering it was _your_ race that unleashed the Genophage."

"I was wondering when that would come up," Okeer smirked while Liara winced in the background.

"What are you talking about?" Pressly asked.

"We created the Genophage to act as a deterrent," Linron continued. "It was never supposed to be deployed! But when it was completed, one of the Hierarchy's generals ordered its use and had our lead scientist at the time arrested when he protested against it!"

Victus closed his eyes and exhaled through his nostrils as the room turned to regard him. "If there's one thing I've learned over the past week, it's that I can't change the past. I can't speak for General Haedrus, and it's not my place to apologize for what he did. What's done is done. What I can do is make amends. If it does mean anything, the Hierarchy apologizes for what it did."

"Talk is cheap," Wrex snarled. "We need action."

"Well I'm willing to act to get us all working together," Victus replied, before locking eyes with the Dalatrass. "How about you?"

 _Codex: Zero Fleet_

 _The Olympus is equipped to act as a mobile shipyard, effectively serving as a fortress on the move. As part of that function, it services a number of frigates, destroyers, cruisers, missile boats, dreadnoughts and carrier ships. A minority of these ships are flagships for the various Alliance fleets. In addition to these units, the Olympus has over nine hundred fighter-bombers, manned and unmanned combined._

 _The Zero Fleet is the designation for any and all ships in residence within its docking bays. As part of extended combat doctrine, the Olympus would first use its wormhole drive to position itself before releasing its craft from the bays. During this period, it may even fire off its main gun. Once the fleet is deployed, the Olympus would raise its shields in preparation for direct enemy contact while the Zero Fleet spreads out to form an inverted umbrella, herding enemy units into the Gamma Ray Superlaser's cone of fire. Additionally, the fleet would use its guns to redirect or break up enemy wreckage that could impact the massive super dreadnought._

 **Anyone see the shout-out from Wrex?  
**

 **Bad things are in store for Omega, aren't they?**

* * *

 **World-building. I think this is both one of the easiest and hardest things for an author. It's easy enough TO world-build. It's very hard to do it WELL.**

 **Some authors do what I do. They tack on supplemental data entries that go with the story, but the information is not necessarily impactful to the story. When done well, the information adds clarity to parts of the story and integrates with it. Poorly done, the information has little to no relevance with the story itself. As an example, J R R Tolkien, in the context of his immediate story in the LOTR trilogy. The genealogy of the Elven Race is all very interesting when combined with the story of the Silmarillion, but has nothing to do with the main trilogy itself. Or the few tidbits about Morgoth, the first dark lord that Sauron served. Relevant in the distant backstory, not so much in the Return of the King.**

 **Other authors, and better ones than myself, manage to incorporate their world-building into the active storytelling. The cheapest way to do this is character exposition. Some character who serves as the story's "expert" goes on explaining some part of the culture, technique, etc. The more difficult way is as part of the story description, without it coming off as labored or deliberately stretched out.**

 **Most authors do some combination of all this. Some might create or contribute to wikis that spring up in support of their work or hold AMAs to answer fan questions. The very best authors are the ones for whom their work itself is capable of drawing you into their world in breathtaking detail, where their writing flows naturally and the pace of exposition fits with the story. I only dream of reaching this level of writing. As it is, I'm woefully inadequate.**

 **One reviewer pointed out to me over a year ago that the backstory I've built demonstrates flaws in the society. They immediately also went on to say that those flaws make it more real and believable, because every world, culture, society has flaws. I really have to agree with that. When you build your world, do not try to make it perfect. Remember that Utopia means both "a perfect place" and "no such place."**


End file.
